[dragoon500ly]

Sources are Omaha A Flawed Victory by Adrian Lewis, D-Day by Steven Ambrose and D-Day by Tute, Costello and Hughes

The Target List

The target list for the Joint Fire Plan included enemy artillery batteries, main roads, road intersections, communications centers, bridges, railway centers, cable junctions, road embankments, telephone exchanges, pillboxes, ammo depots, construction sites, machine gun positions and troop concentrations.

First priority was on for the destruction of enemy offensive weapons. Second priority on the isolation of the battlefield and third priority for the destruction of enemy defensive positions. Considering that only forty minutes of bombardment was available to attack the water’s edge defenses, the vast majority of the effort was expended elsewhere. Case in point, Pointe du Hoc, a known enemy coastal defense battery site. A brief survey of the site, even today, confirms a vast amount of overkill. Pointe du Hoc had been the target of pre-invasion air strikes, and on D-Day was targeted by air strikes and naval gunfire and then by direct assault by a Ranger battalion. It is none known that the artillery pieces originally stationed there had been withdrawn inland. At the time, it was the opinion of Allied Intelligence that the guns were of large enough caliber and with sufficient range to threaten the transports, this was the main reason behind the decision to relocate the transport area further out to sea. Such a large amount of ordnance was expended on Point du Hoc that, in realistic terms, a quarter of it would have been enough to suppress the battery for the day. The use of the remaining three quarters of the ordnance would have been enough to clear three of the beach exits on Omaha Beach. But this scale of destruction was intentionally avoided because of fears that the damage done to the beach structure would have slowed the buildup.

The invasion beaches at Omaha, with their obstacles and minefields, were not targeted by the heavy bombers and battleships. The reason behind this decision was optimism on the part of the senior leaders (Eisenhower, Montgomery and Bradley) who simply did not believe that the assault would be difficult. These leaders also did not want to disfigure the beaches by bombing them with 500 and 1,000-pound bombs and 14-inch shells from the battleships. The craters caused by this type of bombardment would have so damaged the beach surface, that extensive engineer work would have been necessary to repair the beach surface, thus slowing the buildup of troops and supplies. Tests at the Woolacombe Assault Training Center had determined that the ideal weapon for clearing beach obstacles and minefields would be the 100-pound high explosive bomb.

The casemated gun positions of reinforced concrete could not be destroyed by such small bombs. In order to achieve the quality and character of the destruction desired, they would be forced to use various types of bombs. The heavy bombers were therefore assigned targets on the bluffs above and behind the beach and the beach exits themselves. A total of ten targets were assigned at Omaha Beach and they were scheduled to be attacked from H-30 minutes to H-5 by the heavy bombers. None of these targets were engaged by the heavy bombers on D-day because the planes flew too high and employed a method of bombing that was incapable of providing the precision necessary---blind, radar bombing. Naval gunfire support from the battleships and cruisers were dedicated to counter battery fire and other inland targets. This left only the twelve destroyers and the armed landing craft to provide the “drenching fire” for the assault teams. The necessary levels of drenching fire need to destroy beach obstacles, breach minefields and suppress or destroy defensive emplacements was simply not possible given the breadth of the assault beaches, the naval assets dedicated and the level of joint training acquired in June of 1944.

In the Pacific, the navy, marines and army perfected the technique of providing the assault troops with a wall of walking fire. This type of fire required both a large number of firing platforms as well as extensive ammunition reserves. It also required close coordination and extensive training between the assault elements and the supporting units, a level of coordination and training that was never achieved in the European Theater of Operations. In part this was due to the nature of the terrain with the army and navy seldom having to come into contact with one another, thus joint operations were simply a momentary inconvenience to the independent operations of each service. In addition, veteran troops soon learned the necessity of following up the bombardment at distances of 100-150 yards, accepting the resulting “friendly-fire) losses in order to close assault the defenders before they could recover from the shock of the bombardment, the inexperienced units deployed at Omaha Beach were incapable of this level of combat acumen.

Drenching fire has been mentioned several times before, this type of fire was designed to explode land mines before advancing troops, cause enemy soldiers to take cover, cause destruction and disorganization in the enemy’s defenses and allow the attack troops to close with the enemy. As can be seen by the previous posts, this type of fire may have been planned, but was not delivered at Normandy. In addition, drenching fire was not intended to destroy pillboxes or reinforced positions. Such targets had to be engaged individually and with direct fire. This was one of the key lessons of Tarawa. It was a lesson that Eisenhower, Montgomery and Bradley all failed to heed.