The plan was for DD tanks to land first, at 0630, immediately after the naval warships lifted their fire and the LCT(R)s launched their 1,000 rockets. There were thirty-two of the swimming tanks at Utah, carried in eight LCTs. In their wake would come the 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry, in twenty Higgins boats, each carrying a thirty-man assault team. Ten of the craft would touch down on Tare Green Beach opposite the strong point at Les-Dunes-de-Varreville, the others to the south at Uncle Red Beach.
The second wave of thirty-two Higgins boats carrying the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry, plus combat engineers and naval demolition teams, was scheduled to land five minutes later. The third wave was timed for H plus fifteen minutes; it included eight LCTs with some bulldozer tanks as well as regular Shermans. Two minutes later the fourth wave, mainly consisting of detachments of the 237th and 299th Engineer Combat Battalions (ECBs), would hit the beach.
None of this worked out. Some craft landed late, others early, all of them a kilometer or so south of the intended target. But thanks to some quick thinking and decision making by the high command on the beach, and thanks to the initiative and drive of the GIs, what could have been mass confusion or even utter chaos turned into a successful, low-cost landing.
Tides, wind, waves, and too much smoke were partly responsible for upsetting the schedule and landing in the wrong place, but the main cause was the loss to mines of three of the four control craft. When the LCCs went down it threw everything into confusion. The LCT skippers were circling, looking for direction. One of them hit a mine and blew sky high. In a matter of seconds the LCT and its four tanks sank.
At this point Lts. Howard Vander Beek and Sims Gauthier on LCC 60 took charge. They conferred and decided to make up for the time lost by leading the LCTs to within three kilometers of the beach before launching the tanks (which were supposed to launch at five kilometers), giving them a shorter and quicker run to the shore. Using his bullhorn, Vander Beek circled around the LCTs as he shouted out orders to follow him. He went straight for the beach—the wrong one, about half a kilometer south of where the tanks were supposed to land. When the LCTs dropped their ramps and the tanks swam off, they looked to Vander Beek like “odd-shaped sea monsters with their huge, doughnut-like skirts for flotation wallowing through the heavy waves and struggling to keep in formation.”1
The Higgins boats carrying the first wave of assault teams were supposed to linger behind the swimming tanks, but the tanks were so slow that the coxswains drove their craft right past them. Thus it was that E Company of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry, 4th Division, was the first Allied company to hit the beach in the invasion. The tidal current, running from north to south, had carried their craft farther left so they came in a kilometer south of where they should have been.
General Roosevelt was in the first boat to hit the shore. Maj. Gen. Barton had initially refused Roosevelt’s request to go in with the 8th Infantry, but Roosevelt had argued that having a general land in the first wave would boost morale for the troops. “They’ll figure that if a general is going in, it can’t be that rough.” Roosevelt had also made a personal appeal, saying, “I would love to do this.” Barton had reluctantly agreed.