June 6, 1944: Against all odds Years of planning, Ike’s leadership laid foundation for D-Day success By Jim Tice Times staff writer When 150,000 American, British and Canadian forces assaulted beaches and drop zones on the Normandy coast of France on June 6, 1944, they were executing a strategy conceived four years earlier, well before the United States officially entered the war. “The Europe First strategy actually emerged in the late-1930s, when a war with Germany became a possibility,” said military history professor Dr. Christopher Gabel, referring to the plan to strike at Germany and destroy its war machine. The American and British chiefs of staff held secret meetings in early 1941 to plot strategy, “which was quite remarkable given our officially neutral stance at the time,” said Gabel of the Army’s Combat Studies Institute, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Because the United States had very little in the way of armed forces in 1939, “we could build the Army from the ground up to invade Germany,” he said. “I think it was very important that we knew where we wanted to go, and we stuck to that concept. The ascendancy of Ike the Americans and British agreed early on that a single officer, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, would command the invasion of Europe — a unique position that went to Eisenhower in December 1943. “If the selection of a supreme commander had been made [earlier in] 1943, it probably would have gone to a British general, because the bulk of the invasion troops and equipment would have been British,” Gabel said. Once in command, Eisenhower had unprecedented authority over operational and tactical decisions involving millions of American and Allied troops, according to Gabel and Lt. Col. John Suprin, an assistant professor of military history at the staff college. “The invasion originally was scheduled for June 5, and two days before, Eisenhower gets a report that the weather will be bad on that date, so he postpones it,” Gabel said. “The following day, he got a report for June 6 that the weather would be marginal, and he made a decision to launch the assault.” Choosing Normandy By the time Eisenhower became supreme commander in late 1943, Allied leaders already had determined that the Normandy coast of France offered the most feasible avenue of attack into the heart of Germany. The chief reason was the overriding need to secure a deepwater port that could be used in the buildup of forces and materiel for the drive into Germany. Cherbourg on the Cotentin Peninsula, about 30 to 40 miles from the future U.S. invasion beaches, was a favorite of the planners. The second consideration was the range of air power, particularly British Spitfire and Hurricane fighters. “This invasion is going to hinge on tactical air support, and the British aircraft had a limited range, much shorter than American aircraft,” Gabel said. The third reason Normandy was selected was that it was suitable for an amphibious assault because it had little in the way of mud flats, marshes and cliffs. Omaha Beach, best option The Allies chose to invade at Omaha Beach, a five-mile stretch of sand in front of Colleville-de-Mer, because of its proximity to Cherbourg. “If you want to go to Cherbourg, you’ve got to land at Omaha,” Gabel said. “The characteristics of Omaha are bad, but they are not showstoppers. There are cliffs there, but there also are four draws, or gullies, that allow exits. “Our bad luck at Omaha wasn’t so much that it was a bad beach selection, but that there was an entire German division, the 352nd Infantry, that we didn’t know about.” The other U.S. beach was Utah, landing site of the 4th Infantry Division on the Cotentin and the right flank of the 1st Infantry Division. Just hours before the amphibious assaults, U.S. forces conducted two major airborne operations. One, by the 101st Airborne Division, was designed to open exits from Utah Beach. The second, conducted by the 82nd Airborne Division, focused on the capture of Ste. Mere Eglise, a critical road juncture that linked Utah and Omaha. Daylight on D-Day As dawn broke on June 6, German defenders along “Hitler’s Atlantic Wall” gazed out on the largest armada in world history. Under Operation Neptune, the Allies had massed nearly 5,000 ships, including nine battleships, 23 cruisers, 104 destroyers, 71 large landing craft and thousands of troop transports, minesweepers and cargo craft. At 5:30 a.m., a deafening barrage of naval gunfire opened on the beaches occupied by the Germans, detonating minefields and destroying many obstacles and defensive positions along the vaunted Atlantic Wall. Allied close-air support was everywhere. Fighters and bombers flew 11,000 sorties against artillery positions, railroad junctions, troop concentrations, headquarters and other high-value targets. On Utah Beach, the naval bombardment lasted one hour; by 6:30 a.m., troops of the 4th Infantry Division were surging ashore under heavy fire. Within three hours, the men had collapsed the German beach defense, and U.S. soldiers and supplies were moving inland. At day’s end, 23,000 soldiers had come ashore at Utah, at a cost of 197 casualties. It was a much different scene at Omaha Beach. Rough seas swamped landing craft, not only making the soldiers seasick and wobbly, but dooming 57 of 96 amphibious tanks that were supposed to clear exits off the sprawling, sandy beach, which was a maze of obstacles and anti-personnel mines. Naval gunfire and bombing had been relatively ineffective in this area, so the attackers moved forward with great difficulty under the German gunfire raining down on them. German defenders caught the 1st ID and 29th ID soldiers in the open with raking small-arms fire, mortars and artillery. By midday, the situation had deteriorated to the point that First Army commander Gen. Omar Bradley considered canceling the assault and moving troops not already ashore at Omaha to Utah. In a display of Army small-unit leadership that stands as an enduring legacy of D-Day, commanders and NCOs rallied their men and moved them out of the killing zones and into the exit lanes. By the end of the day, 34,000 troops were ashore at Omaha, although the price tag was heavy with 2,500 casualties, the most of any of the beach invasions. Together, the 82nd Airborne and 101st Airborne had another 2,500 casualties; the Canadians had 1,100; and the British had 3,000. Col. George R. Taylor, commander of the 1st ID’s 16th Infantry Regiment, is quoted in the official history as proclaiming, “There are two kinds of people staying on this beach: the dead and those who are going to die. Now, let’s get the hell out of here.” “I think that is kind of a timely message for people to think about today.” he said.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 05:04:23 +0000
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