The Atlantic Wall Pinned the Men at Omaha. Destroyers Steamed In and Blew the Bunkers Apart.

Comments · 2

• WW

  @WW2-Vanguard · 1 month ago · pinned

  QUICK FACTS - The Omaha strongpoints vs the destroyers<br><br>Omaha&apos;s strongest strongpoint, Widerstandsnest 62 above the Colleville draw, held about 35 men of the 352nd Infantry Division around two casemated Czech-made 75mm guns. (Steven Zaloga, Omaha Beach 1944)<br><br>Allied intelligence expected the static 716th Division; the better-trained 352nd Infantry Division had moved into the key defenses before the landing. (US Army official history, Cross-Channel Attack)<br><br>The strongpoint guns were sited to fire in enfilade, straight down the length of the beach along the waterline, not out to sea. (Zaloga, Omaha Beach 1944)<br><br>Of the 32 DD swimming tanks launched for the eastern sector, 27 sank before reaching shore. (US Army official history, Cross-Channel Attack)<br><br>Destroyer Squadron 18&apos;s 5-inch/38 guns fired a shell of about 54 pounds at roughly 15 rounds a minute, faster in bursts. (US Navy, Naval Weapons of World War Two, Campbell)<br><br>USS McCook fired 975 rounds of 5-inch in support off Vierville, closing to about 1,300 yards; USS Carmick fired more than 1,100 shells, spotting off American tanks&apos; fall of shot. (Samuel Eliot Morison, The Invasion of France and Germany)<br><br>Rear Admiral Carleton Bryant radioed from USS Texas, &quot;Get on them, men. Get on them,&quot; ordering the destroyers to close the shore around 10 a.m. (Morison, The Invasion of France and Germany)<br><br>Widerstandsnest 62 was silenced and overrun by about 3 p.m., among the last resistance nests to fall. (Zaloga, Omaha Beach 1944)

• PE

  @peaceworld-or-death · 1 month ago (edited)

  Finally! Somebody praising the critical Destroyer gunfire support on Omaha Beach. Nothing in popular culture so far; not The Longest Day, not Saving Private Ryan, not no movie before or since. Just guys in dungarees overcoming MG crossfire with, wait, what? Private Ryan invokes 2 Tiger tanks and SS platoons flung far to the German Left against the Americans, when it was the Brits and Canadians who took whole divisions of Tigers and Panthers and SS Regiments in the teeth on the Right. Then the movie bad-mouths the do-nothing British. Inexcusable!<br>Somebody should make a movie about the un-cooperative Army Air Force and its ridiculous dummy bomb exercise behind Omaha (&quot;Too much flak if we fly parallel to the beach!&quot; &nbsp;You get massacred in the air so they don&apos;t get massacred on the beach. But Nooooo. We must keep bombing German and French cities flatter.). Plus US commanders who refused British &quot;funnies&quot; tanks landing directly on the beach, and let all their own DD tanks sink too far offshore. <br>Then it should portray the DDs coming in to point blank range and re-arranging the Nazi fortification scheme. At those close ranges, you still failed to praise the DD&apos;s 40mm and 20mm gun crews firing over open sights to stitch single MG and mortar emplacements, sniper nests, trenches and any German troop movement, one by one across the whole field of fire. Much more picky and surgical than 5&quot; sledge hammers. It must have been glorious watching that mayhem though binocs on the bridge of those DDs that day. A lot more fun than on the beach...<br>Didn&apos;t Texas take a hit or two? What were casualties like among the DDs?<br>That would make a great movie.