Quote:
Originally Posted by Adm.Lee
Putting Corlett and not Gerow in charge at Omaha might have led to a different fire-support plan?
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When I started digging through the Gunfire Support Plan, what struck me the most was just how limited the naval bombardment really was, some of the defensive positions were to be hit with no more than 3-4 salvoes...WTF?!?
Samuel Eliot Morrison, the naval historian had this to say on the Omaha Beach defense, "altogether, the Germans had provided the best imitation of hell for an invading force that American troops had encountered anywhere. Even the Japanese defenses of Iwo Jima, Tarawa and Peleliu are not to be compared with these." Considering that the three Japanese islands were reknowned as some of the hardest actions that the Marines ever fought, this says a lot about Omaha Beach.
Toss into the pot that the Allies had massive information on the location and construction of the German defenses, via the French Resistance who would work on the defenses during the day and radio their reports in at night, then how could a thirty minute fire plan be considered as anything other than hopelessly inadequate.
One of the arguements in favor of the gunfire plan was that any extended bombardment would alert the Germans to the location of the invasion and there is a lot to be said for this. German reinforcements started arriving in the late afternoon of June 6th (mostly 21st Panzers movement to cover Caen), but siginificant reinforcements still were not able to arrive for at least 36-hours. So why wasn't a bombardment of, say 3-4 hours undertaken? Would you believe Bradley's reason was to "maintain tactical surprise"!!!!
Maybe its me, but sailing a fleet of a few thousand ships off a beach, kinda blows the surprise....