THE OVERLORD PLAN for Omaha was elaborate and precise. It had the 116th Regiment of the 29th Division (attached to the 1st Division for this day only) going in on the right (west), supported by C Company of the 2nd Ranger Battalion. The 16th Regiment of the 1st Division would go in on the left. It would be a linear attack, with the two regiments going in by companies abreast. There were eight sectors, from right to left, named Charlie, Dog Green, Dog White, Dog Red, Easy Green, Easy Red, Fox Green, and Fox Red. The 116th’s sectors ran from Charlie to Easy Green.

The first waves would consist of two battalions from each of the regiments, landing in a column of companies, with the third battalion coming in behind. Assault teams would cover every inch of beach, firing M-1s, .30-caliber machine guns, BARs, bazookas, 60mm mortars, and flamethrowers. Ahead of the assault teams would be DD tanks, Navy underwater demolition teams, and Army engineers. Each assault team and the supporting units had specific tasks to perform, all geared to opening the exits. As the infantry suppressed whatever fire the Germans could bring to bear, the demolition teams would blow the obstacles and mark the paths through them with flags, so that as the tide came in the coxswains would know where it was safe to go.

Next would come the following waves of landing craft, bringing in reinforcements on a tight, strict schedule designed to put firepower ranging from M-1s to 105mm howitzers into the battle exactly when needed, plus more tanks, trucks, jeeps, medical units, traffic-control people, headquarters, communication units—all the physical support and administrative control required by two overstrength divisions of infantry conducting an all-out offensive.

By H plus 120 minutes the vehicles would be driving up the opened draws to the top of the bluff and starting to move inland toward their D-Day objectives, first of all the villages of Vierville, St.-Laurent, and Colleville, then heading west toward Pointe-du-Hoc or south to take Trevières, eight kilometers from Omaha.⁵

EISENHOWER’S LITTLE APHORISM that plans are everything before the battle, useless once it is joined, was certainly the case at Omaha. Nothing worked according to the plan, which was indeed useless the moment the Germans opened fire on the assault forces, and even before.

With the exception of Company A, 116th, no unit landed where it was supposed to. Half of E Company was more than a kilometer off target, the other half more than two kilometers to the east of its assigned sector. This was a consequence of winds and tide. A northwest wind of ten to eighteen knots created waves of three to four feet, sometimes as much as six feet, which pushed the landing craft from right to left. So did the tidal current, which with the rising tide (dead low tide at Omaha was 0525) ran at a velocity of 2.7 knots.