AFTERTHOUGHTS
Unlike men, all invasion landing sites were certainly not created equal. In eight separate areas along 45 miles of Normandy’s coast, over a million men went up against 380,000 defenders. Airborne landings resulted in between 1,200 and 1,500 initial casualties for each of the three Divisions involved, but Airborne/Airlanding was an inherently high risk business and high losses were expected. Many of those losses were injuries from just getting on the ground.8 Each Allied Division landing on a beach put more than 25,000 men into France in two days for the cost of just over 630 casualties on Sword; over 1,200 on Juno; 413 on Gold; as many as 3000 on Omaha; and under 200 on Utah.9 Omaha is the most interesting to analyze with two Infantry Divisions landing side-by-side, one experienced and the other not; one with armored support, the other not—at first. Big Red One lost 30% of its initial landing force in the first hour, including almost all the Company level leadership, finishing the day with more casualties but fewer KIAs than 29th Infantry Division coming ashore a mile west.
Each Overlord beach landing had generally the same strength and support, the same weapons and equipment. The troops were similarly trained and motivated. Why were those costs and results so different? What follows are observations (and opinions) made from a distance in time and space, and the comparative safety of my retirement home in Virginia.
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
The beaches were all about the same size—four to five miles east to west. All of the beaches shared a high tidal range resulting in very broad low-tide beaches culminating in shingle at the high-water line. Soft, sodden tidal sands proved poor footing for wheeled vehicles and sloping shingle was difficult for metal treads on the tanks. Beyond the shingle, all but Omaha had relatively gradual rises inland. On beaches other than Omaha locations hundreds of yards south were just a few feet higher than the high water line. On all beaches, invasion vehicles had to cut through the immediate lip of the shore (or breakwater or coast road construction) above high water lines to get off the beach proper. Once off the beaches there were no physical features obstructing passage for 20 miles south. Inland from Sword, Gold, Juno and Utah beaches the ground was relatively level, but shadows on pre-invasion reconnaissance imagery showed Omaha with 20 to 100 yards of swale below 100 to 170-foot high bluffs, even steep cliffs in some places. There was little or no cover from the beach across the swale to the foot of those bluffs. The U.S. Army in particular was highly dependent upon vehicles and on Omaha, vehicle access to higher ground inland was channeled through five draws; ancient eroded drainage forming natural routes of various steepness leading down from the cliff tops.
CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
Urban development was most dense on the eastern end of the Invasion (Sword Beaches), with numerous large houses and commercial structures all along the shore, and many good roads going inland. Development, paved roads and access inland were increasingly sporadic to the west. Juno and Gold beaches each had several small cities separated by generally uninhabited coast with sparse settlement more prevalent as one went west. Buildings on British beaches and Utah were oriented toward access to the sea for recreation and fishing. The only commercial accesses to the sea were at the eastern end of Sword, (Caen Canal), Courseulles-sur-Mer (on Juno), Port-en-Bessin-Huppain (a small fishing port between Gold and Omaha), and two others between Omaha and Utah. None of that sea access played a role in the initial landings.
Except for a few scattered beach houses, Omaha had little building on the shore just beyond the beaches. Urban development near Omaha was in villages located where the draws exited to high ground. Access to the sea was incidental and transportation inland was on high ground, paralleling the coast, linking farming villages. Utah Beach was almost uninhabited, having only isolated beach houses to get in the way or provide hiding places for defenders. The few settlements near Utah were 1000 to 2000 feet inland but on land barely higher than the beaches themselves. Beyond them was a wide belt of intermittent wetland.
Photo recce showed all of this. Shadows at several landing sites disclosed sea walls, retaining walls and berms inhibiting egress from the actual beaches. The western end of Omaha landings (Vierville to Les Moulins) faced eight to fifteen foot high sea walls built to protect a coast road from sea erosion. Juno landings also had seawalls to surmount at both Bernieres-sur-Mer and Courseulles-sur-Mer but troops broke through them early. Invasion planning included ways and means to breach those known high-water mark obstacles.
DEFENSES
Long and medium range German artillery was evenly dispersed along the coast, easily identified and easily neutralized. Except for a few locations behind Sword and Mont Fleury, onshore invasion beach defenses were paper-thin (500 feet deep in most places) but, given constraints of time, manpower and resources, on most beaches they were skillfully designed and faithfully manned. At Omaha’s ‘Easy Red’ and ‘Fox Green’ landings, less than 100 ill-trained defenders caused ten times their number in casualties on the beaches.10 Once invaders punched through the outer shell, or circled behind defenses, the whole system collapsed. This leads to the conclusion that attacking directly at the strong points, particularly Omaha’s infamous well-defended draws, was an unfortunate (or naïve) choice. Gold, Utah, and the way events finally played out on Omaha, showed that enduring enfilade fire and going inland between strong points where the defenses were weakest resulted in the best and fastest advances, and fewest casualties.
Off-shore obstacles caused a lot of pre-invasion angst, to the point of dictating the H-Hour, but weren’t as effective barriers as feared. Where they held landing craft well short of the beach it cause some troops into water over their heads, and machine-gun fire swept near helpless attackers wading in surf—but men came ashore in spite of the obstacles.
All of the strong point locations were known from pre-invasion imagery. New construction was easy for PIs to identify as defenders superimposed new shapes on the existing terrain, particularly on the western beaches and especially on Omaha. Casemates retrofitted into existing buildings, such as facing Sword Beach, were harder to identify.
Identifying bunkers and casemates was one problem, what was inside them was another question. Casemate size could suggest weapon caliber and type. Casemate location could also suggest the type of gun. Direct line-of-sight on a beach surely meant an anti-tank gun or machine guns. Prepared firing positions farther back from the beaches would be for indirect-fire weapons such as howitzers or mortars. Human-source Intelligence trickling out of France filled in some of the details, but not all.
Omaha Beach defenses were different from the other D-Day target areas in several respects. The British landings were on coasts where towns were several blocks deep. Roads leading inland were plentiful, as were roads paralleling the coast. On those beaches, strong points tended to be fortification of buildings already present. An exception was the eastern end of Sword (beach ‘Roger’) where much earlier bombing forced the Germans to build concrete bunkers from scratch—defenses that proved harder to neutralize. Fortifying in an urban setting somewhat limited choice of location and restricted lines of fire. Flammable construction materials in pre-existing buildings made them more vulnerable to damage from bombing, gunfire from ships and attack by tanks. With the exception of Les Moulins, villages along Omaha were on high ground and didn’t overlook the beaches. Omaha defenses were built from scratch in open land, taking full advantage of the terrain, using all the engineering skill and experience from years on the Russian Front. The resulting concrete casemates and bunkers were artfully sited to withstand enemy fire from off-shore while sweeping the beaches with their own guns. Omaha strongpoints were the only defenses looking down with a commanding view of the beaches.
The key to victory, particularly on Omaha, was getting tanks ashore to take out defenses and reach maneuver ground beyond—and both sides knew it. German defenders did a masterful job of blocking Omaha’s five inland access routes and turning them into killing grounds. Strong points on the heights above each draw allowed defenders to engage landing forces while well off-shore and crossing the open sands, finally raking the coastal berms with automatic weapons, heavy machine guns, mortars, anti-tank guns and light artillery. Strong points on each beach provided enfilade fire, supporting each other and punishing attackers for a considerable range east and west. Because of the concave shoreline, Omaha landings were commonly under fire from three to five strong points. Off shore obstacles were also heavy immediately opposite the five Omaha draws.
INITIAL ATTACK OPERATIONS
Pre-invasion Naval fire from heavy guns was less effective than expected, little falling on the actual beach defenses. It might have been more helpful to have a creeping barrage roll up the beach at low tide to destroy off-shore obstacles and detonate mines—much like in World War I (since Normandy was essentially a wide-front head on assault a’ la the Somme). However, tearing up an urban area with large caliber fire usually does more to provide additional and unexpected defense opportunities for the enemy. The few Destroyers that dared to go in close, supporting attackers with 5″ flat-trajectory gunfire at point targets, probably saved several beaches, certainly the 1st ID end of Omaha.
Sorry airmen comrades—the same comments apply. Pre-invasion bombing of the Atlantic Wall didn’t accomplish much. Perhaps the most successful was Pointe du Hoc, the most heavily bombed location by 5 June. Installation of large-bore guns was thwarted, but the site still had a vigorous small-weapons defense when the Rangers famously scaled those cliffs. However, horizontal bombing deeper inland was highly effective, cutting rail and road lines that German reinforcements needed to use, serving to isolate the beachhead. Caen’s airport is an example of aerial bombardment doing its job, as was last minute bombing of the Mont Fleury Battery behind Gold beaches. But imagery says horizontal bombing was almost useless against the beach defenses. Horizontal bombing by heavy and medium bombers in WW II just didn’t have the accuracy to hit small ‘hard targets’ like the concrete casements guarding landing beaches. Tactical fighter-bombers employing dive-bombing, rockets and strafing were extremely effective once combat had expanded beyond Atlantic Wall defenses, successfully attacking point targets as small as moving tanks, interdicting behind the FEBA and controlling the air over the battlefield.
Assault troops were basically armed with hand weapons: pistols, rifles, BAR, BREN and STEN guns, Bangalore Torpedoes, flame throwers, satchel charges, PIAT and ‘Bazooka’ antitank weapons. None of those were particularly effective against hardened casemates. Getting tanks ashore early proved a key to success on most beaches.11 Near failure of experienced infantry without tanks on the east end of Omaha proves the point. Being cut to pieces by weapons out-ranging them, firing from emplacements they couldn’t eliminate with the weapons on the beach, caused many troops to go to ground. Once even experienced troops crouch in cover during intense fire, it is hard to get them attacking again. Facing down defending machine-guns, direct fire from tank main-guns was extremely effective in suppressing fire from German anti-tank and machine-gun bunkers on every D-Day beach. Tanks on the beach also did wonders for infantry morale.
German field artillery and mortars were zeroed in and sited to provide high-angle fire at beaches east and/or west of a strong point. They were effective when targets were clustered near the high-water line—less so as assault boats approached. Targets on the beaches were too mobile and too randomly positioned, German observation data too disrupted, for defending field artillery to do aimed damage on the beaches. But they did a lot until troops moved inland.
Direct fire weapons were another story. Positioned for enfilade fire, and aiming with almost flat trajectory, those weapons could engage targets off shore out to their maximum range, and they accounted for most of the landing craft casualties. The 50mm PaK 38 Anti-tank Gun had a range of 500 yards (with Armored Piercing ammunition) and maximum range of 1540 yards. An M4 tank’s gun and armor were on a par with German 50mm anti-tank guns in a shoot-out. A solid hit at short range and the right angle could penetrate the M4’s armor but the tank’s 75mm turret gun had the advantage directly facing a casemate opening.
On 6 June the M4s were only overmatched by 88mm guns—every Invasion beach faced at least one, Sword and Omaha each had two. The 88mm had an effective range of 4,400 yards and could reach out to 17,000 yards.12 A high-velocity anti-aircraft weapon that could throw a 20 pound round to an altitude of 25,000 feet had the punch necessary to penetrate Allied tank armor. Eighty-eights encountered in Normandy were PaK 43/41s, the AAA gun mounted low on wheels and with an armored shield for the gunners. Those were direct fire weapons, depending on line-of sight for target acquisition and firing.
The concave coastline meant the two 88s at Omaha Beach were particularly well sited to overlap coverage from the base of the bluffs to well off-shore—but not directly out to sea. Arcs show a nominal 5,000 yard range. Arrows indicate the initial assault landings.
Both attackers and defenders knew the 88s were the most potent weapons in the defense mix and an old military adage is ‘if the enemy is in range, so are you’. There was no escaping those guns, they had to be faced. The 88s took a toll on every beach—landing craft, tanks and riflemen. Destroying those guns was a high priority for every landing. One of the 88s on Sword destroyed four tanks and several landing craft before it was silenced. Eventually all were taken out by persistence and combined attacks from infantry and pairs of tanks working as teams to draw fire and respond. The cold truth was the Allies could keep landing more men and tanks and the defenders couldn’t bring up new guns.
Where tanks on other beaches successfully engaged German strong points with nearly horizontal fire from their turret guns, the ‘Shermans’ may have been less effective on Omaha because many German defense positions were on 100+ foot high bluffs. Perhaps the maximum 25 degree elevation on M4 75mm guns made it harder (or slower loading) for them to aim and fire up at bunkers on the heights flanking each draw.
STRATEGY AND TACTICS
Location of the Normandy landings was a pragmatic balance between:
• Proximity to bases and ports in the UK.
• A location where the Allies could gain and maintain control of the sea and air.
• Enough space to land nine Divisions and maneuver toward meaningful goals.
• Places where defending German forces were relatively thin on the ground.
• Places where massed landing support forces would be least vulnerable.
Admittedly fire from defenses, smoke on shore, unforeseen currents and fear made it easy for coxswains to be confused and land at the wrong places, but it is curious why the criteria above wasn’t applied to selection of the individual beaches themselves. Sword landings had little choice and punched straight ahead at several locations, quickly reaching metalled roads heading inland. Troops on Juno had plenty of room east-to-west and yet charged directly into the teeth of the only two really well defended nodes in that landing area—and had the second highest losses for the day. Once through the defensive crust the Canadians also had the greatest progress, achieving almost all of their D-Day objectives by nightfall. On Gold, the heaviest defensive firepower (Mont Fleury) was neutralized by bombing and sidestepped. Landing forces arriving on relatively undefended beaches withstood enfilade fire until strongpoints could be taken from the side or rear, resulting in the second fewest casualties of the day.
The same was certainly not true on Omaha—the most costly beaches. Trying to push two Divisions ashore to take the defenses by storm was brute force and very expensive before it paid off. Attacking between the infamous Draws would have meant suffering intense enfilade fire (but troops faced that anyway) and complete reliance on only Infantry weapons (but 1st ID did anyway). Attacking directly at the Draws meant going into the strength of defenses specifically designed and focused to repulse landings and deny the Draws. After hours of being pinned down and taking brutal losses, when troops scaled the heights between Draws and attacked German strong points from the flank or rear, the Widerstandsnests were quickly neutralized or abandoned. Defenders in strong points faced in a single direction and were not a mobile force. Defenders had routes for retreat but no ‘fall back’ positions. Requiring vehicles not immediately available for towing, defending guns couldn’t be removed from casemates and used elsewhere, so why not intentionally by-pass some of them? Of course the larger weapons, including the howitzers would still have been effective against landing craft bringing in reinforcements until their casemates were eliminated or they ran out of ammunition, but I believe far fewer assault troops would have been casualties in the long run by swift inland pushes between strong points to get beyond the enfilade fire. However, that would have required landing precision probably beyond the Coxswains and conditions in the initial wave.
Utah was also planned for frontal assault on German strong points (remember Utah was added late in the planning process). By accident, units on Utah came ashore where the defenses were weak and made that landing the most successful of the five beaches. Surely that should have been a lesson for future assault planning.
Conditions in Pacific island landings were so different their lessons were of little help in Overlord planning. The only experience planners could use to design the Normandy landings were virtually unopposed landings in North Africa (a little over 1000 casualties), expensive success in Sicily (25,000 casualties) and Invasion of Italy (12,500 casualties). The January 1944 disaster at Anzio was too recent to understand what went so wrong and why. I suspect British planners were also haunted by specters of Gallipoli and Dieppe. When reports for H-Hour + 8 came in you can almost feel the sighs of relief. Rising casualties and slowing/stalling advances a week after D-Day must have given generals shivers of discomfort as they pictured another Salerno-stall out.13
Looking at imagery showing what was faced and the spaces involved, it is obvious that Normandy Invasion planning involved an enormous amount of detailed, sophisticated, even subtle, thinking, and the logistical arrangements were amazing. But we can also see there was little finesse in selection of the actual assault landing sites and tactics. Rather they had overtones of World War I brute force, head-on trench attacks, knowingly using sheer weight of expendable men and equipment to trump Rommel’s ‘stop them on the beach’ strategy.
AERIAL PHOTORECONNAISSANCE COVERAGE
PR was covering what would become the OVERLORD landing sites occasionally from 1941 on, and more frequently as the invasion neared. However, much of that imagery was small-scale; good for mapping but unsuited for detailed PI work. Nor did that imagery enlarge readily to help PIs identify defenses. Of course that wasn’t a serious problem until Field Marshal Rommel accelerated construction of Atlantic Wall defenses and when the Allies began planning for invasion. Then, and because of the proliferating V-Weapons threat, frequent, higher quality, better scale imagery was needed throughout the invasion area. That collection continued unabated through the invasion.
Security and bad weather forced a PR stand-down on 5 June. Heavy morning cloud cover scrubbed some PR on the 6th, but US 7 Group alone flew twenty-six missions that day, not all supporting Overlord.
I came across little coverage near H-Hour (which doesn’t mean there isn’t more).14 Other than locating Airborne landings, given the time lag between imagery collection and report dissemination, PR couldn’t have played much of a role on 6 June 1944. Plots indicate most of the missions were short—multiple cameras but less than 100 frames each.
To this day it’s common PI practice, with a spate of coverage in a fluid ground situation, to work the newest missions first. By 1000 hours (certainly by noon even on Omaha), troops were off the beaches and moving inland so it is possible some of the mid-morning beach PR coverage was so overtaken by events that film was processed but never printed (and never looked at by busy PIs). Been there, done that. With frames of imagery rolling in faster than PIs can scan them thoroughly the tendency is to read-out and report sortie objectives and go on to the next mission.
Afternoon imagery was reverting to the classic tactical PR role, going deeper inland, searching for enemy reinforcements, dispositions and activities out in front of the Allied advance. After the morning of 6 June, any coverage of the beaches must be considered documentary. Examples in this book from 7 June certainly were. Those missions paralleled the coast and were flown lower, returning large scale, beautifully sharp imagery (i.e., best light conditions—around noon). From mid-June on PR had a full plate supporting troop movements inland and searching France for V-1 launch sites. The beaches were covered later in June to document status of the Mulberries, and again following the big storm of 19-22 June. We see the beaches once more in early July and the last cover I found was October (a long, small scale strip covering the entire landing area). None of those PR missions were for Intelligence.
A note of caution: aerial photoreconnaissance shows events from a unique and usually enlightening perspective but from 12,000 feet war can look clean and precise—almost abstract. You see where fighting has been, seldom exactly where it was at the moment. You see little or nothing of actual contact and confusion, and nothing at all of the tension, courage, blood, noise, fear and death. Ground images and personal accounts deal with that, but they can’t put what’s happening in an overall context. They are flashes in time and space. They can’t encompass simultaneous events. They can’t freeze an entire battlefield with two or three clicks of a shutter allowing a PI to analyze the imagery (and situation) for minutes, hours, even days.
Ground shots and first-person accounts also capture a narrow context that can give a distorted impression of overall events. But first-hand accounts and photos of near disaster on Omaha are obviously the most dramatic, tending to capture the imagination and dominate public perception, skewing our understanding of the total landing operation. Every landing had to overcome initial ground fire but there was no universal experience on the beaches. The first thousand men ashore at any location faced different circumstances than soldiers landing a few miles away. Men reaching the same beach a few hours later had a yet another situation. Trapped on a beach with comrades all around being shot or blown to pieces during landing is a powerful narrative, overshadowing the fact that on other beaches other men were coming ashore relatively unscathed. A rifleman pinned down by intense machine-gun fire on Omaha couldn’t imagine that east and west of him vehicles were already rolling inland bumper to bumper.
Aerial imagery tends to level all that, fostering understanding and objective analysis.
That being said, I know of no event in World War II so well covered by aerial photography as the Normandy Invasion. There are hundreds of rolls of original negatives15 and thousands of frames to be examined to better witness and understand events in broad sweep and microcosm. I know I’ve only seen a fraction of that lode. Surely buried amid photos of empty fields, clouds and ocean are meaningful, even priceless, images to be identified and analyzed to select the most informative frames documenting the Invasion. What I’ve shown in this book is only the tip of that iceberg. It is only what I chanced to come across (and recognized as important at the time). I hope other researchers and historians will continue the work more systematically. All it takes is time, patience…and knowledge of how to look.
Photo Interpreters are not infallible, but we do see things from a different angle (no pun intended) and different time frame. I’ve told you what the Normandy Invasion aerial imagery I looked at said to me. If I’ve been successful, the reader now has a different, and more comprehensive, view of those momentous days in June 1944.
8. These are the hardest to sort out. On D+1, unit reports carried 6,000 Airborne Infantrymen as missing, and bodies are occasionally still being found in the French countryside.
9. It is impossible to separate landing, post-landing and next day casualties on some Invasion Beaches. Nor is it possible on some to separate killed and wounded casualty statistics. Sources vary so I’m going with numbers that seem reasonable to me. German losses are even harder to nail down, ranging from 4,000 to as high as 9,000 men in the initial two days.
10. Two Divisions landing in four miles of beach gave the defenders a ‘target rich’ environment.
11. British beaches also had Churchill tanks called Armored Vehicle, Royal Engineers (AVRE), mounting a Petard Mortar that threw a 40 pound High Explosive charge 150 yards to reduce barricades and bunkers.
12. Data well known to the Allies from combat experience and weapons captured in North Africa.
13. Fortunately the Allies had such complete command of the air that German generals could never marshal enough force to push the landing back.
14. A notable exception being the three hand-held low oblique photos starting my section on Juno. Perhaps the Canadians arranged for a C-47 flying in close because they didn’t have a PR Squadron to go directly over their beaches? That cover is unique and I’d like to see more of the mission.
15. Could be up to five 500’ rolls per sortie but most of these missions were ‘in and outs’. Lengths were more likely less than 200’ (under 200 exposures) from two or three cameras. Similar troves of RAF film are held at The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives (TARA), Glasgow, Scotland.