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Do you happen to know why the Omaha bombers missed as a group? The failure to 'lead' the target makes sense, I'm wondering why it wasn't individual to planes bu

Do you happen to know why the Omaha bombers missed as a group? The failure to 'lead' the target makes sense, I'm wondering why it wasn't individual to planes but systematic for the beach. My guess would be that the time to drop was called wrong by a flight commander or computed wrong beforehand, rather than assessed individually in each plane, but if you happen to know more I'd be curious.

dragontamer 7y ago
Good question. I looked it up, and it seems like the operation was way more complex than I thought (and it already sounded quite complex to me!) 1. The skys were overcast, so the bombers were dropping blind through the clouds. 2. The Omaha-beach bombers erred on the side of caution: they didn't want to release the bombs too early, because that would be "Friendly Fire", hitting the Allied Troops instead. Its quite possible that the bomber squadron simply all missed because the clouds were just over Omaha beach (but not necessarily over the other beaches). I'm mostly reading this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_Beach#Pre-landing_bombardment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_Beach#Pre-landing_bombar... ------- It sounds like there's widespread agreement that the Naval commanders didn't offer enough battleship bombardment support as well. ------- So the full set of events are: 1. Bombers missed (clouds blocked their view + worried about friendly fire) 2. Navy commanders made a strategic error, and failed to deploy enough battleship support. 3. Commando Paratroopers failed to stop reinforcements, because reinforcements were already at the Beach holding a training drill. 4. 27 of the 29 amphibious tanks sank due to heavy waves. The landing infantry had to run up-hill in the beach sand into machine guns without any tank-support. 5. Bad waves meant a lot of infantry landed off-target of their initial plan. The amphibious vessels hit a sandbar, meaning many infantry started their journey not on the sands of the beach, but wading in the water 50-feet into the water still. Pretty much every bad-luck event possible happened on Omaha beach.

dragontamer 7y ago

Good question. I looked it up, and it seems like the operation was way more complex than I thought (and it already sounded quite complex to me!) 1. The skys were overcast, so the bombers were dropping blind through the clouds. 2. The Omaha-beach bombers erred on the side of caution: they didn't want to release the bombs too early, because that would be "Friendly Fire", hitting the Allied Troops instead. Its quite possible that the bomber squadron simply all missed because the clouds were just over Omaha beach (but not necessarily over the other beaches). I'm mostly reading this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_Beach#Pre-landing_bombardment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_Beach#Pre-landing_bombar... ------- It sounds like there's widespread agreement that the Naval commanders didn't offer enough battleship bombardment support as well. ------- So the full set of events are: 1. Bombers missed (clouds blocked their view + worried about friendly fire) 2. Navy commanders made a strategic error, and failed to deploy enough battleship support. 3. Commando Paratroopers failed to stop reinforcements, because reinforcements were already at the Beach holding a training drill. 4. 27 of the 29 amphibious tanks sank due to heavy waves. The landing infantry had to run up-hill in the beach sand into machine guns without any tank-support. 5. Bad waves meant a lot of infantry landed off-target of their initial plan. The amphibious vessels hit a sandbar, meaning many infantry started their journey not on the sands of the beach, but wading in the water 50-feet into the water still. Pretty much every bad-luck event possible happened on Omaha beach.