June 6

[Guest]

Dont forget what happened today in 1944. Those dudes had serious balls. I'd be pissing my pants.

[pawsandclaws]

I could not imagine being 18 or 19 and sitting in that craft waiting on the door to drop.No cover on the beach and machine guns raking the entire beach. Unreal.

[Darth Biscuit]

Yeah, I cannot even fathom having to do what they did. Literally walking into bullets.

[cookinwithgas]

Having been to Omaha Beach, it's hard to explain just what a terrible, terrible place it is to invade. It was selected because it was thought that the terrain would make it less likely the Germans would concentrate a lot of firepower there but we were wrong, so we had to contend not only with the long beach and the cliff, but overlapping fields of fire from well placed machine gun emplacements. It was the single most boneheaded decision of the day from the Allied side.

If you want to read something cool about the invasion, check out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_Bridge

- the bridge is at a museum on the side of the canal now. You can still see a giant dent in the structure where a German 500lb bomb dropped from a FW-190 hit dead center to deny the British the use of the bridge, but failed to detonate, as well as machine gun bullet dents....

[pOpCoRnPoPpEr]

this too.

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[mr beauxjangles]

My grandfather was part of the 9th Infantry Division that landed on Utah Beach. I believe it was four days after D-Day. I was always told to never talk to him about the war when I was a child. As curious as I was, and as interested in history as I was, I knew I couldn't ask him. He was a pretty quiet man, never cursed, never smoked or drank, and was a great father, grandfather, and husband.

About ten years ago, just a few years before his passing, he agreed to be interviewed by the Library of Congress. He cried, screamed, and cursed the entire way through the interview. About sixty years of bottling it up. Once that interview was over, it was like he had released it all. He shared so many incredible stories and spoke fondly of his friends, those that returned with him and those that didn't.

Thinkin' of you today, pops.

[mmmbeans]

did you see the interview?

[Davidson Deac II]

THe biggest problem at Omaha was that the Tanks never made it to shore. Had they made it, they would have been able to take out many of the machine gun emplacements. But rough weather in the channel swamped most of them.

[g5jamz]

I know it's Hollywood, but the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan should be seen in a movie theater on constant loop throughout the day on June 6th. My grandfather who served in WW2 (not D-day) had died the day before the day I went to see this when it released. As I sat in the theater myself, women were sobbing, guys were riveted, I tried to put myself in their boots and can't imagine the terror they faced. Courage isn't something you see as it's happening, but I'll be damned if those men/kids didn't show it.

[mmmbeans]

the planes not bombing the beach was a big problem too. more guns+no cover= bad news.

[g5jamz]

Yeah...the DD tanks nearly all drowned. Problem was keeping that massive of an operation a secret, so a day/week of delay may have allowed fortification to the point it would've never succeeded.

The US, Brit, Canadian forces simply overwhelmed the germans in numbers. We look at it from the allied perspective. Read books on it where germans describe that morning looking out of their pillbox and what they witnessed coming at them. Think if this had been an SS division at these beaches. Most of these german soldiers were conscripts (Poles, Czech, etc), but larger divisions could've easily been there in short notice.

[g5jamz]

the planes not bombing the beach was a big problem too. more guns+no cover= bad news.

They bombed, and they bombed, and they bombed. Read accounts of Point Du Hoc. Germans were really good at building fortifications. As far as the beaches went...destroyers were pushing their limits cutting in and providing point blank support risking beaching. USS Corry was sunk by a german battery. 88s and 155s were raining down on everything. And just think how bad it had been if the guns had not been removed from Point du Hoc. We were very fortunate. A couple of chess pieces placed differently and we could've been looking at Dieppe v2.0.

[Davidson Deac II]

Yeah...the DD tanks nearly all drowned. Problem was keeping that massive of an operation a secret, so a day/week of delay may have allowed fortification to the point it would've never succeeded.

The US, Brit, Canadian forces simply overwhelmed the germans in numbers. We look at it from the allied perspective. Read books on it where germans describe that morning looking out of their pillbox and what they witnessed coming at them. Think if this had been an SS division at these beaches. Most of these german soldiers were conscripts (Poles, Czech, etc), but larger divisions could've easily been there in short notice.

Fwiw, a good percentage of the DD tanks at Gold, Juno, Sword and Utah made it ashore. Thats a big reason why those beaches were not as bloody as Omaha. Almost all of the tanks at Omaha were lost though, perhaps because they were launched while still to far out, or navigation errors on the part of the crew (or some combination thereof).

And if I am not mistaken, at least one of the units defending Omaha was a crack unit (can't remember the name though). But it made for a very bad combination for the troops at Omaha. Makes what they did even more impressive.

[pawsandclaws]

The planes did NOT bomb the beach. The infantry was told they would to create craters for cover.I forget the reason why they did not but the beaches were not bombed.