OT; The Longest Day

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

There's also the point that bombarding by dark wouldn't accomplish much but wasting ammo, and that the landing time had to be influenced by the tide (I believe they wanted low tide to avoid the obstacles?) and daylight. That didn't leave much for bombardment. That said, there could have been a whole more more done, IMO, towards setting up channels for calling fire, and more DDs or small ships to suppress the beach defenses.

The hybrid doctrine used by Bradley at Normandy ignored all of the experience of the previous landings. North Africa, Sicily, Salerno and Anzio all featured hasty bombardments of the beach defenses and then the landings of the assault troops in the early morning hours. Dawn would arrive with the first 3-4 waves already on the beaches. Even the hasty bombardments lasted for anywere from 1-2 hours.

So what was Bradley thinking?

D-Day had the shortest bombardment period, followed by landing the troops during daylight. And to really puzzle everyone, Gerow (the corps commander) as well as the Hubner (the 1st ID commander) both objected to the gunnery program. Right up to the point that Bradley threatened to remove both officers from their commands.

One can almost pity Bradley, standing safely offshore on his command ship, hearing the sketchy reports of the failure of his grand scheme. In the end, it was the raw courage of the assault troops, coupled with the sucidial bravery of the supporting destroyers that enabled the Americans to win at Omaha.

But, dear God, at what a cost.