Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach was one of five Allied beach landing sectors of the amphibious assault component of Operation Overlord during the Second World War.

On June 6, 1944, the Allies invaded German-occupied France with the Normandy landings. "Omaha" refers to an 8-kilometer (5 mi) section of the coast of Normandy, France, facing the English Channel, from west of Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes to east of Vierville-sur-Mer on the right bank of the Douve river estuary. Landings here were necessary to link the British landings to the east at Gold with the American landing to the west at Utah, thus providing a continuous lodgement on the Normandy coast of the Baie de Seine (Bay of the Seine River). Taking Omaha was to be the responsibility of United States Army troops, with sea transport, and a naval bombardment force provided predominantly by the United States Navy and Coast Guard, with contributions from the British, Canadian and Free French navies.

The primary objective at Omaha was to secure a beachhead 8 kilometers (5 miles) deep, between Port-en-Bessin and the Vire river, linking with the British landings at Gold to the east, and reaching the area of Isigny to the west to link up with VII Corps landing at Utah. The untested American 29th Infantry Division, along with nine companies of U.S. Army Rangers redirected from Pointe du Hoc, assaulted the western half of the beach. The battle-hardened 1st Infantry Division was given the eastern half.

Opposing the landings was the German 352nd Infantry Division. Of its 12,020 men, 6,800 were experienced combat troops, detailed to defend a 53-kilometer (33 mi) front. The German strategy was based on defeating any seaborne assault at the water line, and the defenses were mainly deployed in strongpoints along the coast.

The Allied plan called for initial assault waves of tanks, infantry, and combat engineer forces to reduce the coastal defenses, allowing larger ships to land in follow-up waves. But very little went as planned. Difficulties in navigation caused most of the landing craft to miss their targets throughout the day. The defenses were unexpectedly strong, and inflicted substantial casualties on landing U.S. troops. Under intense fire, the engineers struggled to clear the beach obstacles; later landings bunched up around the few channels that were cleared. Weakened by the casualties taken just in landing, the surviving assault troops could not clear the exits off the beach. This caused further problems and consequent delays for later landings. Small penetrations were eventually achieved by groups of survivors making improvised assaults, scaling the bluffs between the most well-defended points. By the end of the day, two small isolated footholds had been won by the American forces,^{[disputed – discuss]} which were subsequently exploited against weaker defenses further inland, achieving the original D-Day objectives over the following days. American forces suffered 2,400 casualties at Omaha on June 6, but by the end of the day they had landed 34,000 troops. The German 352nd Division lost 10 percent of its strength, with 1,200 casualties, but it had no reserves coming to continue the fight.

The coastline of Normandy was divided into sixteen sectors, which were assigned code names using a spelling-alphabet – from Able, west of Omaha, to Roger on the east flank of Sword. The area of beach that would become Omaha was originally designated X-Ray, from the phonetic alphabet of the day; the name was changed on 3 March 1944. The names of both Omaha and Utah were probably suggested by Omar Bradley, as two privates fitting out his London headquarters were from Omaha, Nebraska (Gayle Eyler) and Provo, Utah; they were not named after the corps commanders, who were from Virginia (Gerow) and Louisiana (Collins). Eight further sectors were added when the invasion was extended to include Utah on the Cotentin Peninsula. Sectors were divided into beaches identified by the colors Red, White and Green, corresponding to the colored lights used on naval craft to designate the port (left), amidships, and starboard (right) sides.

Omaha was bounded at either end by large rocky cliffs. The crescent-shaped beach presented a gently sloping tidal area averaging 300 m (330 yd) between low and high-water marks. Above the tide line was a bank of shingle 2.5 m (8 ft) high and up to 15 m (49 ft) wide in places. At the western end, the shingle bank rested against a stone (further east becoming wood) sea wall which ranged from 1.5–4 m (5–13 ft) in height. For the remaining two thirds of the beach after the seawall ended, the shingle lay against a low sand embankment. Behind the sand embankment and sea wall was a level shelf of sand, narrow at either end and extending up to 200 m (220 yd) inland in the center, and behind that rose steep escarpments or bluffs 30–50 m (33–55 yd) high, which dominated the whole beach and were cut into by small wooded valleys or draws at five points along the beach, codenamed west to east D-1, D-3, E-1, E-3 and F-1.

The German defensive preparations and the lack of any defense in depth indicated that their plan was to stop the invasion at the beaches. Four lines of obstacles were constructed in the intertidal zone. The first, a non-contiguous line with a small gap in the middle of Dog White and a larger gap across the whole of Easy Red, was 250 m (270 yd) out from the highwater line and consisted of 200 Belgian Gates with mines lashed to the uprights. 30 meters (33 yd) behind these was a continuous line of logs driven into the sand pointing seaward, every third one capped with an anti-tank mine. Another 30 meters (33 yd) shoreward of this line was a continuous line of 450 ramps sloping towards the shore, also with mines attached and designed to force flat-bottomed landing craft to ride up and either flip or detonate the mine. The final line of obstacles was a continuous line of hedgehogs 150 meters (160 yd) from the shoreline. The area between the shingle bank and the bluffs was both wired and mined, and mines were also scattered on the bluff slopes.