The place is hell and was certainly the most difficult landing location of the entire operation. Nevertheless, from popular memory I would say that Omaha was one of two outstanding peace of bravery on the part of American troops in werstern Europe (the other being Bastogne but we already talked about that one some times ago).
Fire support was important, of course, but success was also favored by a tactical mistake of the German and it was definitely due to the troops on the ground. From what I know, the place was very well defended and the US troops had to suffer from very bad luck: bad conditions and in one of the tank battalion, out of 15, 13 DD tanks sunk. Moreover, when the troops reached a sufficient number to launch an assault the sea was high and the beach had been reduced to a small strip of sand.
Another thing about Normandy. It is a fairly flat region which seems easy on a map but at that time it was not so true. All roads had very thick hedges on each side and this gave a tremendous advantage to the defender. I'll check on it (for the tank commander's name) but one of the experienced German tank crew, riding a Pzkfw VI Tiger I, took out something like 100 vehicles from an ally armored division (I think British) all by himself, including tanks and armored. The vehicles were stuck on the road and couldn't maneuver and the only thing the Germans had to do was to shoot them one after one from the other side of the hedge at point blank while driving slowly (the hedge was so thick that the infantry couldn't cross it). Because of the hedge and the confusion that followed the Tiger I escaped intact. A few days later that tank crew was ambushed by several Sherman Firefly and finally destroyed by the last surviving Sherman (not entirely sure about that last point so).
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