Just watched Saving Private Ryan again, ***Q about D-Day***

[LOLyourFace]

If what the movie portayed is pretty accurate @ Omaha beach, why did they use such seemingly ineffective strategy?

Straight head-to-head sea-to-shore frontal resulted in loss of many many men, thousands of men just dying as soon as the boat docks by stationed full automatics. The boat couldn't even land properly due to metal barricades, dumping already dead bodies into water and live ones with their soaked rifles disabled. It was so frustrating for me to watch that scene, the kill ratio must've been like 50 americans for 1 german.

My dad's quick guess was because the beach was the only geographical infiltration point, then I must ask why didn't they warmed the beach up with preemptive naval/air strike before going shore?

Before I google this to find out for myself, I decided to post about it to hear your interesting opinions.

 

[Bootprint]

Don't forget they also dropped some troops in gliders more inland.

 

[GoodToGo]

Originally posted by: LOLyourFace
If what the movie portayed is pretty accurate @ Omaha beach, why did they use such seemingly ineffective strategy?

Straight head-to-head sea-to-shore frontal resulted in loss of many many men, thousands of men just dying as soon as the boat docks by stationed full automatics. The boat couldn't even land properly due to metal barricades, dumping already dead bodies into water and live ones with their soaked rifles disabled. It was so frustrating for me to watch that scene, the kill ratio must've been like 50 americans for 1 german.

My dad's quick guess was because the beach was the only geographical infiltration point, then I must ask why didn't they warmed the beach up with preemptive naval/air strike before going shore?

Before I google this to find out for myself, I decided to post about it to hear your interesting opinions.

From what I gather from the movie, the bunkers were heavily reinforced (they were made of pretty thick concrete) and so any sea or air strikes would have useless. Of couse its just a guess and I would too like to know why navy or sea was not used.

 

[fatalbert]

Originally posted by: LOLyourFace
If what the movie portayed is pretty accurate @ Omaha beach, why did they use such seemingly ineffective strategy?

Straight head-to-head sea-to-shore frontal resulted in loss of many many men, thousands of men just dying as soon as the boat docks by stationed full automatics. The boat couldn't even land properly due to metal barricades, dumping already dead bodies into water and live ones with their soaked rifles disabled. It was so frustrating for me to watch that scene, the kill ratio must've been like 50 americans for 1 german.

My dad's quick guess was because the beach was the only geographical infiltration point, then I must ask why didn't they warmed the beach up with preemptive naval/air strike before going shore?

Before I google this to find out for myself, I decided to post about it to hear your interesting opinions.

they did warm up he beach with a both a naval and air strike the entire night before, but the fortifications were strong so it wasn't that effective

 

[Dudd]

I believe it was foggy the night before D-Day, and they couldn't bomb the beaches at all. I'm not sure about the naval bombardments, perhaps they did and it just wasn't very effective?

 

[SackOfAllTrades]

how the fsck would YOU invade Nazi controlled France?

 

[OREOSpeedwagon]

The only way we won at D-Day was because the germans started running out of ammo and we had an insane amount of soldiers and they couldn't stop us.

 

[GoodToGo]

Originally posted by: OREOSpeedwagon
The only way we won at D-Day was because the germans started running out of ammo and we had an insane amount of soldiers and they couldn't stop us.

Oh god I hope you are wrong because the thought is just sickening

 

[BCYL]

Originally posted by: Dudd
I believe it was foggy the night before D-Day, and they couldn't bomb the beaches at all. I'm not sure about the naval bombardments, perhaps they did and it just wasn't very effective?

They did do naval bombardments before the troops actually moved in to take the beach...

if you watch some of the special features on the DVD, some D-Day veterans said they didnt know what to expect when they hit the beach, cuz some thought the naval bombardments had killed all the germans and it would be a walk in the park...

 

[OREOSpeedwagon]

Originally posted by: GoodToGo

Originally posted by: OREOSpeedwagon
The only way we won at D-Day was because the germans started running out of ammo and we had an insane amount of soldiers and they couldn't stop us.

Oh god I hope you are wrong because the thought is just sickening

I could be wrong but from what I've heard from a few of my teachers thats what happened

 

[KGB1]

This is where Band Of Brother's comes in. It potrays how the American Airborne ParaChuter's were "supposed" to land behind the German defenses and take them out out by dawn to save a several thousand lives on the landing.

Alas we know how mediocre the plan was executed, and the higher unexpected number of GI's were killed instantly once off the transporter boats. Remember the whole coast of Normandy was not fortified totally. The British/Canadians who landed further north of Omaha beach had a "day in the park" getting back into France. American's suffered much more casualties because they were chose to attack the lower portion.

If you want to see a good film about WW1, (it star Mel Gibson) its called Galipolli I believe. Another good movie about invading mass number of troops into a nation.

/Ironically both D-Day and Galipolli invasion was planned by the same man... yep you guessed it.. Winston Churchill...

 

[LOLyourFace]

Originally posted by: GoodToGo

Originally posted by: OREOSpeedwagon
The only way we won at D-Day was because the germans started running out of ammo and we had an insane amount of soldiers and they couldn't stop us.

Oh god I hope you are wrong because the thought is just sickening

yea, that strategy is called "In Sul Jak Jun" in Korean, winning the war with just sheer, sheer numbers of men, accepting the casualities. This tactic was often deployed by Chinese (figures) on Koreans and Japanese wayy back in dynasty times.

I doubt US could afford to that in during that day and age. It was only WWI, human lives were much more valued compared to pre-10th centuries.

 

[Glitchny]

Originally posted by: KGB
This is where Band Of Brother's comes in. It potrays how the American Airborne ParaChuter's were "supposed" to land behind the German defenses and take them out out by dawn to save a several thousand lives on the landing.

Alas we know how mediocre the plan was executed, and the higher unexpected number of GI's were killed instantly once off the transporter boats. Remember the whole coast of Normandy was not fortified totally. The British/Canadians who landed further north of Omaha beach had a "day in the park" getting back into France. American's suffered much more casualties because they were chose to attack the lower portion.

If you want to see a good film about WW1, (it star Mel Gibson) its called Galipolli I believe. Another good movie about invading mass number of troops into a nation.

/Ironically both D-Day and Galipolli invasion was planned by the same man... yep you guessed it.. Winston Churchill...

yeah but d-day worked and when you are fighting a war there are whats called acceptable losses

 

[LOLyourFace]

Originally posted by: Glitchny

Originally posted by: KGB
This is where Band Of Brother's comes in. It potrays how the American Airborne ParaChuter's were "supposed" to land behind the German defenses and take them out out by dawn to save a several thousand lives on the landing.

Alas we know how mediocre the plan was executed, and the higher unexpected number of GI's were killed instantly once off the transporter boats. Remember the whole coast of Normandy was not fortified totally. The British/Canadians who landed further north of Omaha beach had a "day in the park" getting back into France. American's suffered much more casualties because they were chose to attack the lower portion.

If you want to see a good film about WW1, (it star Mel Gibson) its called Galipolli I believe. Another good movie about invading mass number of troops into a nation.

/Ironically both D-Day and Galipolli invasion was planned by the same man... yep you guessed it.. Winston Churchill...

yeah but d-day worked and when you are fighting a war there are whats called acceptable losses

assuming what the movie portrayed is 100% correct, I wouldn't call that 'acceptable losses' at all.

 

[BCYL]

Remember what Saving Private Ryan showed was Omaha Beach only...

British and Canadians troops took Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches much more successfully...

Americans troops at Utah beach also only encountered light resistance...

 

[JimmyEatWorld]

What I always wondered, is why the beach landers were designed with only a single drop-down flap to let the soldiers out, like a dump-truck. Woudln't make tons more sense to have doors that dropped down on the sides, leaving the rear end erect to provide cover, or at least to prevent them seeing inside? This would prevent their guns shredding through a whole boat full of them.

As for the bombing and what not.... I seem to recall that we did not bomb on Omaha beach, rather we bombed somewhere else in Frace to feign an attack there. Hitler mobalized a bunch of resources to that fake place, and Omaha was less than it could have been. In place of that bombing assault was supposed to tbe paratroopers.

 

[KGB1]

yeah but d-day worked and when you are fighting a war there are whats called acceptable losses

No question about it, the effort put into its secrecy, the preparation, the training, schematics were all planned VERY VERY precisely and with great care and detail. The number of troops who've been sent to the mission was more than enough to Guarantee a Victory and Further Expansion... If you watch the film I mentioned, you'll quickly see Winston learned from his mistakes and made sure this plan would work, even God himself would fail is he tried to strike down those troops

 

[LOLyourFace]

wow so many ppl saying we didn't bomb at all, but we actually did. fact

a major misconception eh?

 

[dpm]

I don't know where to begin.

Firstly - it wasn't an ineffective strategy - it was extremely effective, because it worked.

There just is no good way of invading a continent that someone is defending fiercely. The german's had literally years, after taking france, to fortify it against invasion, and there were only a limited number of places the allies could feasibly land.

Before the landings, the allies did soften up the beaches - they were bombed by air, and by a massive naval bombardment, just before. They also bombed the hell out of the beaches along the dover straits, where the germans thought they would land, as part of a massive disinformation campaign to persuade the germans to concentrate their forces elsewhere, which was amazingly succesful.

The reason that the bombardment didn't completely clear the landing zones was that the germans were expecting such a thing and had fortified against it - think it out, if normandy could be cleared just by bombing, there would be no need to land troops!

Of course, a huge number of brave soldiers died, but that was sadly inevitable. D-day was not a screwup, or a disaster - it was a great victory. Remember that such an assault had never before been attempted, such an armada had never before been assembled. The whole thing was totally unprecedented in scale, and it is a tribute to the planning before it as well as the soldiers who fought in it, that it was a success.

Omaha was the worst of the invasion beaches to be on, though. As far as I remember, this was mainly due to the tide being misjudged, and the landing ships being slightly delayed due to bad weather, which also sank almost all of the swimming tanks meant to support the infantry. Also, I don't think the Americans used the 'funnies' - tanks specially adapted for the landings, that the British and Canadians found so useful.

 

[GasX]

Originally posted by: LOLyourFace
If what the movie portayed is pretty accurate @ Omaha beach, why did they use such seemingly ineffective strategy?

Straight head-to-head sea-to-shore frontal resulted in loss of many many men, thousands of men just dying as soon as the boat docks by stationed full automatics. The boat couldn't even land properly due to metal barricades, dumping already dead bodies into water and live ones with their soaked rifles disabled. It was so frustrating for me to watch that scene, the kill ratio must've been like 50 americans for 1 german.

My dad's quick guess was because the beach was the only geographical infiltration point, then I must ask why didn't they warmed the beach up with preemptive naval/air strike before going shore?

Before I google this to find out for myself, I decided to post about it to hear your interesting opinions.

They were going to land in Berlin. Unfortunately, Normandy was in the way...

Care to come up with a better plan?

 

[BCYL]

Originally posted by: dpm
I don't know where to begin.

Firstly - it wasn't an ineffective strategy - it was extremely effective, because it worked.

There just is no good way of invading a continent that someone is defending fiercely. The german's had literally years, after taking france, to fortify it against invasion, and there were only a limited number of places the allies could feasibly land.

Before the landings, the allies did soften up the beaches - they were bombed by air, and by a massive naval bombardment, just before. They also bombed the hell out of the beaches along the dover straits, where the germans thought they would land, as part of a massive disinformation campaign to persuade the germans to concentrate their forces elsewhere, which was amazingly succesful.

The reason that the bombardment didn't completely clear the landing zones was that the germans were expecting such a thing and had fortified against it - think it out, if normandy could be cleared just by bombing, there would be no need to land troops!

Of course, a huge number of brave soldiers died, but that was sadly inevitable. D-day was not a screwup, or a disaster - it was a great victory. Remember that such an assault had never before been attempted, such an armada had never before been assembled. The whole thing was totally unprecedented in scale, and it is a tribute to the planning before it as well as the soldiers who fought in it, that it was a success.

Omaha was the worst of the invasion beaches to be on, though. As far as I remember, this was mainly due to the tide being misjudged, and the landing ships being slightly delayed due to bad weather, which also sank almost all of the swimming tanks meant to support the infantry. Also, I don't think the Americans used the 'funnies' - tanks specially adapted for the landings, that the British and Canadians found so useful.

Here's a pretty good link to what really happened on Omaha beach

 

[GasX]

Originally posted by: GoodToGo

Originally posted by: OREOSpeedwagon
The only way we won at D-Day was because the germans started running out of ammo and we had an insane amount of soldiers and they couldn't stop us.

Oh god I hope you are wrong because the thought is just sickening

Don't take any history classes taught by OreoSpeedwagon...

 

[LordMorpheus]

Its these ground war scenarios that make me sick. I mean, it was a freaking slaughterhouse (any assault on a heavily fortified structure that was designed to repel said assault will be a slaughterhouse).

I am much more interested in the air war, probably because the whole dead people part is removed.

And generally you don't see pilots thrown away in numbers like that of Omaha beach . . they have more training.

Some B-17 missions did get pretty close.




A note about the bombing:

the allies didn't want to pound the fortifications into oblivion and here is why: They wanted the location of their invasion to be a secret. Spending the week or even the night before the invasion dropping 5000kg bombs on a beach would make the Germans say "hey, they just destroyed this fortification, maybe thats where they will attack" so the German force would have been HUGE compared to the german force that was actually there.

That, and the fortifications were enough to render strafing attacks irrelevant and make all but the largest bombs useless.

Had I been Churchill, I would have has a squadron of P-47 Jugs spend the week preceeding D-Day stafing, bombing, and rocketing some other beaches in an effort to draw defenders off of Omaha and the others . . The air attacks would be innefectualy, but they may lighten the defenses at the real targets. Its much easier to kill Germans when they aren't in a fortified location with heavy machineguns and your rifle is waterlogged.

 

[tnitsuj]

I have actually been to the landing beaches in Normandy. You can still see the remains of the fortifications there, and they have a huge museum that describes and illustrates the fortifications that were there. They were formidable. Thier was an incredible bombardment from aircraft and naval gunfire combined with operations behind the defensive lines by the French resistance, and paratroopers.

They actually have at the point du Hoc Ranger memorial unrestored, unrepaired German fortifications and an entire cliff that has been churned up by bombs and shells. You can actually stand in very large bomb craters and see smashed pieces of very thick reinforced concrete bunkers. Despite all that, thier are still several intact bunkers. Short of a nuclear bomb, they didn't really have any way to completely blow a hole in the enemies beach defenses. The only thing they could do was pour troops into a few beaches and eventually overrun the Germans. It worked, but the price was high as expected.

I recommend everyone if they can go visit Normandy. The people are friendly, the land is beautiful,and the drive along the route of embarkation (I forget the French term for it) is a sobering and educational experience.

Point du Hoc Memorial

 

[BCYL]

Originally posted by: LordMorpheus
Its these ground war scenarios that make me sick. I mean, it was a freaking slaughterhouse (any assault on a heavily fortified structure that was designed to repel said assault will be a slaughterhouse).

I am much more interested in the air war, probably because the whole dead people part is removed.

And generally you don't see pilots thrown away in numbers like that of Omaha beach . . they have more training.

Some B-17 missions did get pretty close.




A note about the bombing:

the allies didn't want to pound the fortifications into oblivion and here is why: They wanted the location of their invasion to be a secret. Spending the week or even the night before the invasion dropping 5000kg bombs on a beach would make the Germans say "hey, they just destroyed this fortification, maybe thats where they will attack" so the German force would have been HUGE compared to the german force that was actually there.

That, and the fortifications were enough to render strafing attacks irrelevant and make all but the largest bombs useless.

Had I been Churchill, I would have has a squadron of P-47 Jugs spend the week preceeding D-Day stafing, bombing, and rocketing some other beaches in an effort to draw defenders off of Omaha and the others . . The air attacks would be innefectualy, but they may lighten the defenses at the real targets. Its much easier to kill Germans when they aren't in a fortified location with heavy machineguns and your rifle is waterlogged.

They did that too.... In the days ahead of D-Day, the americans/british did bomb other beaches to try and confuse the germans as to where they were going to land...