after seeing Private Ryan, I can’t imagine how 10% of the soldiers made it up the beach. Don’t know if it was an exageration or just showed a bad spot on the beach. But I read later that about 4,000 that first day. My question is where can I find casuality numbers for different battles. especially Normandy, Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Guaticanal (sp?).
The different beaches had different casualty rates. The British suffered around 400 casualties at Gold and 630 at Sword, the Canadians around 1,200 (or 1 in 18 of the soldiers they landed) at Juno, the Americans around 2,400 at Omaha (of 34,000 that landed at Omaha that day) and 300 at Utah. The two American airborne divisions suffered around 1,200 casualties each. I couldn’t find figures for losses from the British airborne division.
In the Pacific losses at Iwo Jima were around 24,000 for the US (including 6,000 killed). 2,000 were killed in the Guadalcanal landings and around 1,600 at Tarawa.
I’ve also seen statistics that mentioned 76,000 Allied casualties during approximately 6 weeks of the Battle of the Bulge, and that the Germans lost 147,000 killed alone at Stalingrad.
Some useful links:
Yahoo’s D-Day category
Good overview of the Normandy invasion
Yahoo’s Pacific theatre category
Pacific theatre casualties
thanks Mattk,
can’t believe I couldnt spell Guadalcanal. I was raised in a subdivision built in 1950. the streets were alphbetical and war related, bastone, calais, dunkirk, eisenhour,forrestal,guadalcanal, hurtgen forest, iwo jima, jutland, krugen, luzon…
what is the military definition of a casuality? “unable to continue with his military duties…”?
is Pows included?
can’t believe the numbers on battle of the bulge. saw the movie (and patton) and never got the idea that their were great losses. maybe the movie wasnt accurate!! it seems that is the most costly battle the US had.
Usually, a “casualty” is killed, wounded, missing, or captured. “Walking wounded,” sometimes used to describe those who have minor injuries but continue to fight, seem not to be counted by small units but may be counted in large-scale statistics.
One noteable example was Lt. Col Frost’s 2nd Parachute Battalion, the unit which actually took the east end of the Arnhem bridge (the “Bridge Too Far”). Of 525 men, all but 16 became “casualties”; 57 died, 452 were captured. Of those 452 captured, almost all were wounded to some degree, but most continued to fight until the order to surrender was given.
If you’d like to know more about how the U.S. soldiers fared on European battlefields, you might want to pick up Stephen Ambrose’s Citizen Soldiers. One of the more interesting things he points out is that if a wounded soldier could be stabilized for just the twenty-or-so minutes it usually took to get him to a field hospital, his chances of survival were almost 90%.
(While you’re at it, you might want to read Ambrose’s D-Day, too, which goes into vivid detail about Omaha and Dog Beach, where SPR opens. I guarantee you Spielberg read it. He might not have read it closely enough, though… but that’s another hijack.)
As an American combat infantryman in the ETO, you fought until you got killed or couldn’t fight anymore. A “million dollar wound” was a crippling or slow-healing wound that was not totally incapacitating in non-soldiering life, like lost or injured fingers, arms, feet, or legs. Anything less and in most cases you were patched up and sent back to the front.
Be advised–in all cases, the Russians took more casualties than anybody else. Many times more. God help the poor bastards.
Reading about the Russian Front is terrifying. Period.
If you include civilian casualties then the chinese may have had it as bad or worse, with estimates ranging between 12-20M deaths.
Don’t forget that a ‘battle’ is not an homogenous event. 34,000 people landed on Omaha beach, and 2400 were lost. But the FIRST wave of boats to land on the beach would have suffered much higher than 10% casualties, and it was this initial landing that Spielberg was documenting.
A very good movie to rent if you want to know more about D-Day is The Longest Day. It was made quite a few years ago, but it has a great international cast (The Duke, anyone?), and shows both sides of D-Day- Axis and Allies.
What most people don’t seem to understand about D-Day was that there were huge prardrops the night before, with paratroopers working to take strategic towns, or destroy railroads. A lot of the drops screwed up, and while some men were lucky enough to land only a few miles away from their drop point, others landed right into Nazi encampments and towns.
In anycase, rent the movie, if you’re curious about D-Day, and events leading up to it.
i believe the russian and german combined casualties at Stalingrad were even more than the rest of the Allies suffered in the entire war. People think D-Day was bad… whew… nothin compared to Russia’s front.
I seem to remember reading that the first wave on Omaha suffered over 50 percent casualties. I think I read this in my copy of The Longest Day, which seems to be pretty thoroughly researched as far as pop histories go. Unfortunately, I can’t find my copy. Can anyone back this up (or shoot it down?)
messiah, the Russians did have it worse. 50 million seems to be a common number given for total Soviet deaths in WWII. The actual number will never be known, but is probably less. Here’s one person’s estimate for losses across the globe (and proof that there’s a graphic for everything, no matter how sick…)
Omaha Beach was indeed the hardest of all the D day landings, at one point evacuation of the beach head was even considered.
“They’re murdering us here, lets move inland and get murdered.”
Colonel Charles Canham commander 116th Infantry.
“Only two kinds of people are staying on this beach, the dead and those who are about to die. Now let’s get the hell out of here!”
Colonel George Taylor commander 16th Infantry.
It was intended to land 34,000 men and 3,000 vehicles on Omaha beach. It is estimated there were 2,000 - 3,000 casualties.
For a while the German commanders reported that they had stopped the invasion on the beach and that they landing has failed.
mattk wrote:
Were those figures drawn from the web site you gave.
The Guadalcanal figures seem very low. If they are counting only casualties incurred in actual landings, then the Navy losses seem to be much too high. If they aren’t counting most of the naval battles in the vicinity of Guadalcanal, they are much too low.
After poking around a bit, it looks like the figures were drawn from here.
So, throwing in the various naval battles around Guadalcanal (Savo Island, Eastern Solomons, Cape Esperance, Santa Cruz, Guadalcanal, Tassafaronga) cost the US another 2791 Navy killed. Even the Navy figures are confusing, since they give 1176 Navy killed and 988 Marine dead for the Guadalcanal and Tulagi landings. But the Guadalcanal landings were unopposed and the Navy casualties were few, so I don’t understand how they came up with the 1128 Navy dead unless they include the casualties from the Battle of Savo Island, which they account for separately.
The Navy and Marine accounting does not include casualties suffered by the US Army 25th and Americal infantry divisions, both of which fought at Guadalcanal.
I’ll have to dig up Richard Frank’s ‘Guadalcanal’ for better figures.
Andrew Warinner
I read somewhere about the russian casualities taking Berlin. and it was horrible. the war was over and this was just for spoils, beat the allies, revenge, pride,… whatever. it wasnt worth the cost. does anyone have the numbers of that “battle”?