Sharpness?

[rpcrowe]

Omaha was the beach were things went least to plan of any of the allied landing sites. It features strongly in allied and in particular American views of the D-Day landings because of the challenges the forces faced when landing, and how they eventually overcame those. Of all the beach landings, it took the majority of casualties and loss of material. As such Capa's images have incredible historical value as a documentation of the event. There are many other beautifully focused images from other places and times on D-Day, but to me that does not diminish its value as an image. The alternative, if one was focus on sharpness, would have been to throw them all out and have nothing at all - and that would have done a great disservice to Capa for his bravery, and to those who landed with him and who suffered the confusions, casualties and stress of landing under fire.

If anyone is interested in some of the Omaha Beach (and general D-Day problems) the troops faced, this Master's Degree Thesis goes into detail.
http://archives.njit.edu/vol01/etd/2...td2002-069.pdf

I personally think that there were four main problems:

1. Use of heavy bombers (Flying Fortresses and Liberators) to neutralize the German beach defenses and flying these bombers at right angles to the beach, instead of using attack aircraft (such as Thunderbolts and Typhoons) and flying them along the beach defenses. The heavies were not experienced or suited to close air support and most of their bombs landed well inland, causing no trouble to the Germans but, possibly really annoying the French cows. The machine guns and cannon, as well as the bombs, from constant close air support would have least kept the German heads down...

2. The beach bombardment was too short to be effective. And the fire from the only two heavy ships assigned to Omaha Beach (a World War One battleship, USS Texas and an old British cruiser) was directed against possible heavy gun emplacements inland from the beach and not against the dug-in defenses on the bluffs overlooking the beach.

3. No use of Napalm against the bluff defenses. The Allies used napalm primarily against the Japanese. It "could" have been available for D-Day. It was used (sparingly in Europe) later in July 1944...

4. When the Allied Commander realized the decimation that the German machine gun positions on the bluffs was causing, we "should" have been ready to drop a smoke screen to protect those troops.

If D-Day had failed, the War would have been extended by a year or two and who knows what the war weary allies might have settled for. The success of the landings was due more to the bulldog courage of American, British and Canadian troops than to the ability of their generals...

[Tronhard]

Chest Wilmot, in his definitive book, The Struggle for Europe" takes some time to look at the issues of D-Day landings and why the ones at Omaha were so challenging. Among other things he points out a big difference between the British and Commonwealth attitude, and that of the US to vulnerability of infantry to casualties.

Chastened and depleted by the massive losses of life in the four years of the previous war, and those of the current war to date, the British sought to find solutions to avoid casualties in the beach assault. According to interviews conducted by Wilmot at the time, the US disagreed with the British desire to avoid costly head-on battles and instead save lives by manoeuvre and misinformation. They preferred the shortest route, which often involved head-on assaults. This difference applied both tactically and strategically, and the "everyone attacks all the time" philosophy of Eisenhower was to cause a major logistical issue as lines of communication became extended.

This lesson of infantry protection was painfully rammed home when mostly Canadian forces landed at Dieppe. The tanks they landed broke down or lost traction on the rocky beaches, and the few that got past the beaches were halted by anti-tank obstacles - they were sitting ducks. The unprotected troops suffered massive casualties and most were taken prisoner.

Chastened by the experience, the British masterminded to develop specialist armour to cope with beach and other obstacles, and thus reduce the casualties of troops who would otherwise be soft targets. The 79th Armoured Division under Major General Hobart was tasked with developing a series of "funnies", based on various tank chasses: these are described in detail in this web page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobart%27s_Funnies In many cases these specialized vehicles performed admirably in: putting mats over soft sections of sand, rolling logs to fill in anti-tank trenches, dropping bridges over larger trenches over which they could then drive, using tank-mounted bunker-busting petard mortars and flamethrowers to subdue pillboxes and strong-points. Not only were they a technical success, but their sheer presence unnerved many of the defending forces they attacked. The 79th Armoured Division became one of the most successful armoured units of the war, and was the largest armour unit with over 7,000 vehicles by war's end.

The US generals at the time of D-Day considered specialized armour a distraction, and accepted only a few DD (duplex drive) amphibious tanks that were modelled on the Sherman chassis. On D-Day most of these were lost en-masse as they were launched far off shore in choppy conditions, causing them to be swamped with heavy looses to tanks and crews. The timing of the tanks that did make it ashore on Omaha was such that, although a surprise, it was not able to prevent major loss of life to otherwise unprotected US troops. Later the US adopted some of these vehicles for their own use, but on D-Day they were not available to support US troops. One chronic example I saw in a video was of US troops making painful progress, prodding for land mines with bayonets, and under fire. On a British beach a flail tank with chains that beat the ground to explode mines ahead of the tank, created a wide cleared area for the troops to follow up behind.

[Tronhard]

If anyone is interested in some of the Omaha Beach (and general D-Day problems) the troops faced, this Master's Degree Thesis goes into detail.
http://archives.njit.edu/vol01/etd/2...td2002-069.pdf

I personally think that there were four main problems:

1. Use of heavy bombers (Flying Fortresses and Liberators) to neutralize the German beach defenses and flying these bombers at right angles to the beach, instead of using attack aircraft (such as Thunderbolts and Typhoons) and flying them along the beach defenses. The heavies were not experienced or suited to close air support and most of their bombs landed well inland, causing no trouble to the Germans but, possibly really annoying the French cows. The machine guns and cannon, as well as the bombs, from constant close air support would have least kept the German heads down..

Thank you for the reference to the thesis document on the subject. I agree with much of what was said, but do deviate on two point the writer made:
on Page 39 of his document he said "The plan called for 480 American heavy daylight bombers, the only "precision" bombers in the Allied arsenal..."

I understand his comment when applied to a comparison of much of British Bomber Command's heavies forming their Main Force, but it does not hold water when considering the Pathfinder squadrons and formations such as 617 (Dam buster) Squadron and 619. The fact that there was little capability by the Luftwaffe's fighter force to resist daylight bombing in France meant that aircraft that normally operated at night could do so during the day. Britain's De Havilland Mosquito bomber, equipping many Pathfinder units (and some American ones) could carry a greater bomb load than a B17 with the speed and with manoeuvrability of a fighter, and was capable of dive bombing with great precision. Ironically 617 spent the early hours of D-Day flying off the coast of the Pas de Calais, dropping aluminium Window strips with extreme precision to simulate an invasion force heading towards the coast. The purpose of this exercise was worthwhile - to convince the Germans that the Normandy landings were a side show - but it has been argued that they could have been achieved by smaller ships, such as MTB's and MGB's towing reflective balloons

The second thing that was missing was the lack of recognition of the Tactical Air Force as a potent weapon. This force consisted of (on the British side) multiple units of Hawker Typhoons in particular, armed with 4x20mm Canon and 8 rockets forming "cab ranks" of aircraft for support directly called in by front line units. A set of 8 rockets was the equivalent of a broadside from an 8" cruiser. On the American side, in a similar role, they had P38 Lightning and P47 Thunderbolt "Jugs", armed with multiple machine guns, bombs and rocket launchers. There were large numbers of light and medium bombers available too, and they acquitted themselves well in taking out strong points when given good coordinates. His point about dust obscuring the target area is well made, along with the poor targeting of the battleships, engrossed with non-existent coastal batteries. That said, the reluctance of the commanders to bomb close to the beach due to poor weather certainly was a major contributing factor to the ineffectiveness of both the aerial and heavy sea bombardments.

The blunt instrument nature of having main force "heavies" operate in a tactical role was demonstrated when they were used to neutralize German units in the city of Caen. In doing so they destroyed much of the historical city, and inflicted over 1,500 French civilian casualties. The rubble choked the streets to the extent that it, in itself, delayed the allied advance through the city.

I think the author did an admirable job in assimilating material that was hitherto unknown, along with other disparate components to provide a generally enlightening picture of the debacle (that history turned into a gallant force of arms) that was Omaha. However in gaining a context for Omaha one must look in the wider sphere of the landings, the resources and challenges they offered and the historical material to provide context. The Omaha landing was not an exclusively American effort - there were contributions from other Allied forces, and it was part of a concerted landing of three zones: Gold, Juno and Sword. The other American major seaborne assault, Utah, gets little mention in comparison, mostly because it went relatively to plan. I would have liked to see the author's thesis cast a wider net to include context from the experiences and plans of the other forces, and find comparatively few historical references to Commonwealth resources.

[rpcrowe]

I promise that this is the last post I will do on this topic. I just wanted to contrast the fire support available at Normandy with that of the Okinawa landings in the Pacific.

Normandy:
Force "0" consisted of two American battleships, the Arkansas and the Texas (both of World War One Vintage), the British Light
cruiser, Glasgow* , the French cruisers, Montcalm and Georges Leygues, and eight American and three British destroyers.

Okinawa
Fast Carrier Force (TF 58) under Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher with 88 ships (including 11 fleet carriers, 6 light carriers, 7 battleships and 18 cruisers)
British Carrier Force (TF 57) under Vice Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings with 4 carriers, 2 battleships, 5 cruisers, 14 destroyers and fleet train
Amphibious Support Force (TF 52) under Rear Admiral William H. P. Blandy:[24]
TG 52.1: 18 escort carriers with 450 aircraft;[24]
Sl Escort Carrier Group: 4 escort carriers with Marine Aircraft Group 31 and 33;[24]
Mine Flotilla (TG 52.2)
Underwater Demolition Flotilla (TG 52.11): ten 100-strong UDT aboard destroyer escorts[24]
170 fire support landing craft
Gunfire and Covering Support Group (TF 54) under Rear Admiral Morton L. Deyo with 10 old battleships, 11 cruisers and 30 destroyers

What a difference between that and Omaha Beach with one old battleship, US Texas, One light cruiser and a couple of destroyers vs. Okinawa with 19 Battleships, 34 cruisers, and well upwards of five dozen destroyers PLUS Naval and Marine air squadrons that were trained and experienced in close air support of amphibious operations...

No wonder, the Japanese had decided by the time of Okinawa that they could not face the Americans on the beaches due to the devastating firepower from the U.S. (and British) Fleets...

It would have been nice for the U.S. Army if the powers to be had supported them a bit better....

[Tronhard]

I absolutely agree Richard:

When Japan attacked the USA at Pearl there was obvious and justifiable outrage and an immediate declaration of war against Japan. There was no such declaration of war against Germany or Italy - frankly the country, with significant populations hailing from both locations was split on the idea of getting embroiled in Europe, and since they hadn't been attacked by the Germans or Italians... Roosevelt was of a different mind, but in a difficult spot considering the situation. Luckily Hitler solved the problem neatly by declaring war on the USA (silly chap) and at the Arcadia Conference Churchill and Roosevelt agreed on a Europe first policy - something that did not go down well with either Nimitz or Marshall, who saw both their true enemies and interests in the Pacific. They were very grudging in their allocation of naval resources and in particular amphibious assault craft to both the Mediterranean and Normandy landings - Roosevelt had to pull rank on several occasions to get the required resources met.

One thing that was very different between Okinawa and Normandy was the proximity of "friendly" civilian populations. There were occupied French villages and towns in fairly close proximity to the beaches, a nicety that did not impact upon the Okinawa assault. As a consequence the bombardment at Okinawa was, to say the least, expansive... Finally, as we have both agreed, the weather was a major factor in gauging the effectiveness of the bombardment, the actual assault iteself and in gathering real-time intelligence from the beachhead.

[Manfred M]

Trev / Richard - I think both of you seem to have hijacked this thread and the posts from #41 onwards have little to do Matt's original posting dealing with image sharpness.

[Tronhard]

Say no more...