As the Soviet Union needed another front for the war, that's what the allies brought on the 6th of July which was decided during the Trident Conference held in Washington in May 1943. Utah beach was one of the easier beaches to capture because there was no high ground advantage that the Germans had. The plan of attack was for the naval warships to bombard the defenses at 5:50 in the morning, and an aerial bombardment from 6:09 to 6:27 to try and destroy as many defensive establishments on the beach. The assault had to take place early in the morning at 6:30 after the bombing, and it coordinated with a timetable that corresponds to the lowest tide. And the troop started to deploy from Landing Craft Mechanized (LCM), these LCM were designed to drop off as many soldiers as possible in the shortest amount of time.
One of the problems with this beach landing was that the amphibious “duplex drive” tanks were launched 3 km out from the beach and they took too much time to get into the beaches, or they would not float, so the soldiers that landed on the ground had no armored cars to follow behind. But there were not enough defenses, and very quickly, the beach is under control.
The attack through Utah beach was not first not thought was needed, but General Eisenhower added it to make sure that he was going to be an easy capture of the port of Cherbourg at the northern tip of the peninsula. This would allow for a larger area for the supplies that were on England to be quickly transferred on the mainland of Europe.
The plan was to cross the beach and take control of the coast roads(so that they would be able to stop all the supply mines to this part of France), then link up with airborne troops who were to have been dropped inland five hours earlier whose job was also to disrupt trade routes all through the islands of France. The problem was that the plan went wrong from the start. There was a large current for the loading craft, and 3/4 loading craft were lost to the mines that have been set in the area. Also, another large error was that The force landed 2,000 yards east of the landing area that they were wanted to land at. "The assistant division commander, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., quickly realized the error. Uttering his famous remark 'We’ll start the war from here!'"(Britannica). At the end of the day, The western side of the Operation Overlord was not as successful as first hoped for. Losses had been heavy, each division having suffered some 1,200 casualties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Beach
https://www.dday-overlord.com/en/d-day/beaches/utah-beach
https://www.britannica.com/place/Utah-Beach
I think that it is cool how an error actually helped them to take the beach. Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Is an interesting character as a whole to me. He was both the only general to take part of the first waves and also was the oldest man in the invasion. He was renowned for leading his men on the front lines and his son also was in the first wave although he was a captain attacking Omaha beach. Also General Roosevelt would later get a medal of honor for his actions on D-day along with numerous other awards such as his 4 silver stars.
ReplyDeleteI found this post to be very interesting as I never knew that the Omaha was captured due to a mistake. I also find it interesting that Omaha was supposed to be a amphibious attack with the tanks which never showed up.
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