Chuck Liddell
Lt. Gen. Omar Bradley
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Sep 13, 2019 · D-Day: Battle of Omaha Beach: Directed by Nick Lyon. With Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell, Weston Cage, Jesse Kove. When an elite group of American soldiers are ordered to take out a series of German machine gun nests, they find themselves blindly venturing into hostile territory.
- (1K)
- Action, Drama, History
- Nick Lyon
- 2019-09-13
- Overview
- The landing beach
Omaha Beach, second beach from the west among the five landing areas of the Normandy Invasion of World War II. It was assaulted on June 6, 1944 (D-Day of the invasion), by units of the U.S. 29th and 1st infantry divisions, many of whose soldiers were drowned during the approach from ships offshore or were killed by defending fire from German troops placed on heights surrounding the beach.
(Read Sir John Keegan’s Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)
The largest of the D-Day assault areas, Omaha Beach stretched over 10 km (6 miles) between the fishing port of Port-en-Bessin on the east and the mouth of the Vire River on the west. The western third of the beach was backed by a seawall 3 metres (10 feet) high, and the whole beach was overlooked by cliffs 30 metres high. There were five exits from the sand and shingle beach; the best was a paved road in a ravine leading to the resort village of Vierville-sur-Mer, two were only dirt paths, and two were dirt roads leading to the villages of Colleville-sur-Mer and Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer.
The Germans under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had built formidable defenses to protect this enclosed battlefield. The waters and beach were heavily mined, and there were 13 strongpoints called Widerstandsnester (“resistance nests”). Numerous other fighting positions dotted the area, supported by an extensive trench system. The defending forces consisted of three battalions of the veteran 352nd Infantry Division. Their weapons were fixed to cover the beach with grazing enfilade fire as well as plunging fire from the cliffs. Omaha was a killing zone.
Omaha Beach was part of the invasion area assigned to the U.S. First Army, under Lieutenant General Omar Bradley. The assault sectors at Omaha were code-named (from west to east) Charlie, Dog (consisting of Green, White, and Red sections), Easy (Green and Red sections), and Fox (Green and Red sections). The beach was to be assaulted at 0630 hours by the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, with the 116th Regiment of the 29th Division attached for D-Day only. Omaha was wide enough to land two regiments side by side with armour in front, and so the 116th Regiment was to land at Dog (Green, White, and Red) and Easy Green, while the 16th Regiment, 1st Division, was to land at Easy Red and Fox Green.
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The objectives of the 1st Division were ambitious. First it was to capture the villages of Vierville, Saint-Laurent, and Colleville; then it was to push through and cut the Bayeux-Isigny road; and then it was to attack south toward Trévières and west toward the Pointe du Hoc. Elements of the 16th Regiment were to link up at Port-en-Bessin with British units from Gold Beach to the east.
On the morning of June 6, 1944, two U.S. infantry divisions, the 1st and the 29th, landed at Omaha Beach, the second to the west of the five landing beaches of D-Day. It was the bloodiest fighting of the morning. The troops went ahead and, in many cases, had to fight through waist-deep water, being fired upon by German strong points throughout.
The foothold gained on D-Day at Omaha, itself two isolated pockets, was the most tenuous across all the D-Day beaches. With the original objective yet to be achieved, the priority for the Allies was to link up all the Normandy beachheads. During the course of June 7, while still under sporadic shellfire, the beach was prepared as a supply area.
- June 6, 1944
- Allied victory
June 6, 1944, especially at Omaha Beach, had been a bloody affair—worse than even the most pessimistic soldiers had feared. The human cost of the operation was very high, although the exact number of casualties may never be known. Some 291 landing craft had been lost on D-day, and numerous destroyers, LCTs, LCIs, and amphibious DUKWs had been ...
May 22, 2019 · Published May 22, 2019. Updated May 2, 2024. Thousands of Allied troops were killed in the D-Day battle of Omaha Beach, when Germany's brutal defense caught them off-guard. June 6, 1944 — also known as D-Day — was perhaps the single greatest turning point of World War II.
D-Day Landing at Omaha Beach - Warfare History Network. The U.S. infantrymen assaulting Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, found themselves in a lethal killing zone. There was only one way out. This article appears in: May 2019. By Joshua Shepherd.
