Omaha Beach essays

Omaha Beach essays The Allied army had many flaws in its planning and execution in the storming of OMAHA beach on June 6, 1944. OMAHA beach, where, for several hours, the situation appeared to hover on the brink of disaster.(Belchem 90) There was discrepancies with selecting OMAHA beach in reference to its terrain. The air troops who paratrooped from the sky just hours before the first infantry troops arrived on the beach. Unexpected problems with the infantry arouse and were handled erroneously. Finally, there were problems with the Allied tanks and artillery that took part in the invasion. The decision to storm at OMAHA beach was poor. The western third of the beach was backed by a ten foot high seawall, and the whole beach was overlooked by cliffs one hundred feet high(MacDonald 1) The Germans could place themselves in a perfect firing position to wipe out the Allied soldiers. Adding to the dilemma the soldiers franticly tried to hide behind anything they could to avoid the heavy German fire. The German weapons were fixed to cover the entire beach with fire as well as the plunging fire from the cliffs. OMAHA beach was a killing zone.(MacDonald 1) A major problem arose with the mis-drop of the airborne divisions that morning. For over three days, NE-NNE winds gusted from twenty-five to forty miles per hour.(Belfield 91) This caused a major problem for the airborne troops to specifically hit the target which they were assigned to hit. The pathfinders, which were a division of the 101st airborne, generally landed over a mile off target.(Patrick 47) This led to a major disturbance in the timing of the invasion. The timing was a very important part to a mission such as OMAHA beach. The mis-drop of the airborne divisions took only minutes away but impacted th ...