D-Day / Omaha Beach Invasion

Omaha Beach Invasion

Early morning hours on June 6 , 1944 , paratroopers from the British 1st Airborne Division silently dropped and drifted towards the Pegasus Bridge , one of the few bridges that led over the Seine towards Normandy Moments later , they stormed the bridge with heavy casualties . The Allied invasion of Hitler 's "Fortress Europe " has just begun (Dube , 2005

On those hours , lantern-equipped pathfinders dropped all over the Cotentin Peninsula . Alone and unaided , they were dropped to mark the way for the thousands of men coming in behind them

At dawn

, the sea invasion began as an Allied Armada disgorged thousands of troops at five beaches along France 's Normandy coast . Allied forces stormed the shores and battled the German defenses in a fight that would go down as the Longest Day ' in history

The beach 's terrain proved to be an important factor in the assault (Lewis 2000 . Its crescent form is bounded at either end by rocky cliffs and its tidal area is gently sloping . At the western end the shingle bank rested against a stone , which fades further into wood , resembles a sea wall which ranged from 4 feet to12 feet in height . Precipitous bluffs then raised high up to 170 feet , dominating the whole beach and cut into by small wooded valleys

The Germans , earlier anticipating for an attack in the beachheads constructed three lines of obstacles in the water . This consisted of Belgian Gates with mines lashed to the uprights , logs driven into the sand pointing seaward and hedgehogs installed 130 yards from the shoreline . The area between the shingle bank and the bluffs was both wired and mined with the latter also scattered on the bluff slopes (Gerrard , Bujeiro and Zaloga , 2003

Their troops were concentrated mostly around the entrances to the draws and protected by minefields and wire (Dube , 2005 . Each bunker was interconnected by trenches and tunnels . Machine guns , light artillery pieces and anti-tank guns completed the disposition of artillery targeting the beach . No area of the beach was left uncovered , and the disposition of weapons meant that flanking fire could be brought to bear anywhere along the beach

The Allied forces ' plan of attack includes dividing the Omaha beach into ten sectors . The assault landings were to start at 06 :30 , which was coined as the "H-Hour . Before that , the beach defenses will be bombarded by naval and aerial support forces . The objective was for the beach defenses to be cleared two hours after assault . By the end of the day the forces at Omaha were to have established a bridgehead five miles deep into the enemy territory . To execute this plan the Omaha assault force by 2 battleships , 3 cruisers , 12 destroyers and 105 other ships (Vat and Eisenhower , 2003

However , during the initial attack , nothing went according to plan (Lewis , 2000 . Ten of the landing crafts have gone astray before they reached the beach and some were flooded by the rough seas . Some had even sunk . Smoke and mist...