Compared with Utah Beach, Omaha Beach is a world of difference. It is the most severe of the five landings. It is known as the "bloody Omaha".* Because of this, the meeting site commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Normandy landing in 1994 was located on Omaha Beach. The 20-minute shocking war scenes of the classic war film "Save the Soldier" filmed by famous Hollywood director Spielberg reflect the tragic battle on Omaha Beach.

Omaha is located on the east side of Utah Beach, a 6.4-kilometer-long beach between the mouth of the Vill River and the Port of Basing at the southern end of the Cottontan Peninsula. The coast is a steep cliff slope of more than 30 meters high. There are four deep valleys washed out by sea water, which become a natural exit to the inland. The drop between high and low tides on the beach is about 270 meters. The beach is hard sandy land with towering pebbles embankments on it, and behind it are sand dunes, meadows, and woods. There are three small villages along the way. The villages are made of thick stones and surrounded by fields. The ridges of the fields are covered with small trees. This is the unique hedge terrain in the Normandy area, which is easy to defend and difficult to attack.

The German army made full use of favorable natural terrain to build fortifications, set up three obstacles between the low tide line and the ** line, and mixed with a large number of mines. A concrete fortress was built on the pebble embankment, and a snake-bellied barbed wire and mines were built in front of the fortress. The four exits were sealed with mines and steel and concrete obstacles. There were 16 strong support points on the coast, equipped with machine guns and anti-tank guns, and a castle was also built on the cliff, with extremely powerful 88mm artillery. The artillery fire and damage range could cover the entire beach. There were 6 155mm coastal artillery on the cliff of Hawke. It posed a great threat to the activities of maritime warships.

The reason why the Allies chose to land here was because from the mouth of the Vill River to Alomonchi was between the Utah Beach and the British Beach. The location was very important. This 32-kilometer-long coast could only be landed in this section, and the rest of the areas were cliffs and could not land at all. In addition, the Allies believed that the defenders here were a regiment of the 716th Coast Defense Division, which had no armored troops, no motor vehicles, and most of the soldiers were reserves, and their combat effectiveness was very poor.

In fact, Li Mo transferred the elite field force 352nd Infantry Division from Saint-Lo. One of the main regiments of the division was deployed in Omaha, and the Allied intelligence agencies did not find out the whereabouts of the 352nd Division until the landing troops set off. It was too late.

Landing in Omaha was a regiment of the 1st Division and 29th Division of the 5th Army of the US Army. The O formation commanded by Rear Admiral Hall was responsible for transporting it. It arrived at the transfer area at 3:00 on June 6. At that time, the wind was level 5 on the sea surface and the waves were 12 meters high. Ten landing crafts were overturned due to the strong wind and waves. The 300 soldiers carried on the boat were struggling on the sea. Most of the soldiers on the landing craft who did not overturn were dissipated, and the Shanghai water hit the boat. The soldiers were cold and wet, and when they arrived at the beach, the soldiers were exhausted.

What's worse is that in the fire preparations before landing, the Allied forces initially failed to bomb the area in advance in order to achieve tactical suddenness. At 5:50 on June 6, a naval gun fire support fleet composed of two battleships, four cruisers and 12 destroyers carried out forty minutes of naval gun fire preparations. However, because they were afraid of German shore gun shooting at Cape Hawk, the warships only fired at long distances, with very low accuracy.

At 6:00 at 6:00, 480 B-26 bombers carried out direct aviation fire preparations on the German defensive positions, dropping 1,285 tons of bombs, but the clouds were low and thick at that time. The pilots were afraid of accidentally hurting their troops, so they deliberately delayed the bomb drop by 30 seconds. As a result, the 1,285 tons of bombs fell 5 kilometers away. Therefore, most of the German defense fortifications and firepower points were intact. As soon as the Allied fire preparations were finished, the German artillery fire began to fire.

The amphibious and land tanks planned to provide timely fire support with landing troops on the landing force, 27 of the 32 vehicles in the western section sank due to the strong wind and waves within a few minutes after they were launched. Two of the remaining five vehicles were driven by the driver's superb skills to overcome the wind and waves on the beach. The other three were attributed to the initiative of a tank landing captain. When he saw that the first tank had sunk in the wind and waves as soon as he was launched, he immediately ordered the boat's head door to close and send the remaining three directly to the beach.

In the eastern section, the commander saw that the wind and waves were too strong and the water and land tanks could not be launched, so he ordered the tanks to be sent directly to the beach. However, as soon as he arrived at the beach, the tank landing craft had to wander around the coast in order to wait for the armored vehicles to cooperate in combat. The German army seized the opportunity to bombard fiercely and sank two tank landing crafts. It was not until 6:45 that the water and land tanks and armored vehicles drove to the beach, but as soon as the beach was, several were destroyed by German artillery fire.

Then the first wave of 1,500 soldiers began to attack the land, because there was an eastward tide in the sea and the misty smoke on the shore, which made it difficult for the soldiers to distinguish the direction and the formation became chaotic. When landing, the soldiers had to wade through shallow waters more than one meter deep and 50 to 90 meters wide, and then pass through an uncovered beach of 180 to 270 meters wide to get close to the embankment. All of this was under the dense and fierce artillery fire of the German army.

So in the first half hour, these 1,500 soldiers were unable to enter the battle at all. They were just struggling to survive in shallow water. Only 2 of the first eight companies landed on board the reserved beach, but they were also overwhelmed by the German firepower.

The underwater blasting team composed of engineers and naval divers had heavy casualties and equipment loss and serious damage. However, they still overcome difficulties and braved the German artillery fire to start clearing obstacles. Two paths were opened in the eastern section and four paths were opened in the western section. Unfortunately, they did not have time to mark the path before the high tide. The subsequent landing craft could not find the path and were congested on the beach and allowed the German artillery to attack.

The second wave arrived at the beach at 7 o'clock. At the height of the tide, the German artillery fire was very accurate and fierce, completely suppressing the landing troops on the narrow beach. In two hours, no one in the US military rushed to the beach in the western section, and only occupied a 9-meter-wide section of the beach in the eastern section. The sea was filled with landing craft and the order was extremely chaotic. The beach service director had to order only personnel to land, and vehicles and supplies would not land for the time being.

At this time, Bradley, commander of the 1st Army of the US Army, knew that landing was extremely difficult and victory was almost impossible, based on several sporadic communications and reports of warship lookouts, and he planned to give up his landing in Omaha and let the follow-up units of the US 5th Army land on Utah Beach or the British beach.

However, at this moment, the situation turned around. The US Navy, who was responsible for the fire support of naval artillery, saw that the officers and soldiers on the land were killed and injured, and there was no news about the fire control team on the shore and the naval liaison team. It realized that the situation on the beach was extremely serious. The 17 destroyers fully utilized their initiative, regardless of the danger of stranding, touching lightning and being bombarded, sailed to only 730 meters away from the beach to provide close-range fire support.
Chapter completed!