It was the Rangers what saved the day.

[Briganza]

This may be of interest to some. I have not seen the prog yet, due for 6th Jan and not sure if you can get it over there. This is the podcast of historians talking about the prog. It has an update in casualties and that Omaha hinged on the redeployment of a Bn of Rangers. It digresses (pod cast) for a short time at about 25 mins but then move back on track. It looks to be an interesting prog even though the Hamster is fronting it and should be better than some I have seen recently.

 

http://www.open2.net/timewatch/2008/bloodyomaha_extras.html

[Tazaaron]

As being a Ranger myself for many years ive heard all the great history of the Rangers and in just about every major battle from WW2 to the present day includes them some where along the way but u never hear much about them. But when something needed to be done and done now it was always us who did it. Even in Grenada the Rangers dropped in right on top of the Cubans at the airport and secured it then the 82nd arrived by plane and landed then walked off. We also air assaulted in before everyone else in Desert Storm to take some key areas, and i still dont understand why that damn Clinton yanked us out of Somalia, out of all the deployments ive been on that was probably the one we were doing the most good, when we first got there the streets were littered with dead children and we were helping feed them and doing some good but then we lose a few good Rangers that will not be forgotten one day and everyone gets yanked out, the story people dont know alot about is that same day the skinnys took horrible causalties, they wernt very good soldiers they just like to spray and run which made them easy to pick off and were stacking up everywhere. I dont know exact figures myself but they put it at over 1000. They need to have someone tell the full story of the history of some of the Ranger accounts that arnt fully known, another one that comes to my mind is we lost 1 Ranger in Thailand, u probably will never find that one anywhere.

 

Aaron

[Archie Pellagio]

As being a Ranger myself for many years ive heard all the great history of the Rangers and in just about every major battle from WW2 to the present day includes them some where along the way but u never hear much about them. But when something needed to be done and done now it was always us who did it. Even in Grenada the Rangers dropped in right on top of the Cubans at the airport and secured it then the 82nd arrived by plane and landed then walked off. We also air assaulted in before everyone else in Desert Storm to take some key areas, and i still dont understand why that damn Clinton yanked us out of Somalia, out of all the deployments ive been on that was probably the one we were doing the most good, when we first got there the streets were littered with dead children and we were helping feed them and doing some good but then we lose a few good Rangers that will not be forgotten one day and everyone gets yanked out, the story people dont know alot about is that same day the skinnys took horrible causalties, they wernt very good soldiers they just like to spray and run which made them easy to pick off and were stacking up everywhere. I dont know exact figures myself but they put it at over 1000. They need to have someone tell the full story of the history of some of the Ranger accounts that arnt fully known, another one that comes to my mind is we lost 1 Ranger in Thailand, u probably will never find that one anywhere.

 

Aaron

 

How long were you in the Rangers?

Where did you serve beyond Somalia?

[KingSargent]

This may be of interest to some. I have not seen the prog yet, due for 6th Jan and not sure if you can get it over there. This is the podcast of historians talking about the prog. It has an update in casualties and that Omaha hinged on the redeployment of a Bn of Rangers. It digresses (pod cast) for a short time at about 25 mins but then move back on track. It looks to be an interesting prog even though the Hamster is fronting it and should be better than some I have seen recently.

 

http://www.open2.net/timewatch/2008/bloodyomaha_extras.html

Bullshit. Omaha hinged on seasick, cold, wet, US infantry in mixed up units and dumped somewhere (they had no idea where, but it wasn't the objective they had meticulously planned and trained for), under more fire than expected, without planned support, getting their acts together, forming into combat teams under leaders they didn't know, assessing the situation and coming up with new plans and taking the objectives in a few hours.

 

The normal (not specialist) infantry did it, the grunts.

 

Really, just about anyone can put up a decent performance when things go as planned. Recovering a completely FUBARed situation starting from the ground up shows quality.

[Marek Tucan]

I'd say it's yet another piece of uhealthy Elite force fascination. I mean, Rangers most likely did better than regular infantry would, esp. when storming Pointe du Hoc, but attributing them the whole Omaha beach...

[Corinthian]

I'd say it's yet another piece of uhealthy Elite force fascination. I mean, Rangers most likely did better than regular infantry would, esp. when storming Pointe du Hoc, but attributing them the whole Omaha beach...

 

Concur. Just too much. They may have captured and held Pointe du Hoc, but if the Germans held on at Omaha and the infantry there utterly massacred, capturing Pointe du Hoc wouldn't have mattered. It helped, but it wasn't the key to success in Omaha or Overlord as a whole.

[BillB]

Bullshit. Omaha hinged on seasick, cold, wet, US infantry in mixed up units and dumped somewhere (they had no idea where, but it wasn't the objective they had meticulously planned and trained for), under more fire than expected, without planned support, getting their acts together, forming into combat teams under leaders they didn't know, assessing the situation and coming up with new plans and taking the objectives in a few hours.

 

The normal (not specialist) infantry did it, the grunts.

 

Really, just about anyone can put up a decent performance when things go as planned. Recovering a completely FUBARed situation starting from the ground up shows quality.

Indeed. Altho I'm not sure about the meticulous planning and training which, surprisingly (not!) the prog) does not appear to be touching. I'll have a look at the prog, but having read thru the transcript of the podcast a fair few things occur, such as why they don't actually get someone in who actually knows a bit about the content of the programme. I am pretty sure that I have a better grasp on what/why/when happened on OMAHA than all htree of the folk on the podcast put together and I am a long way from being an expert - I reckon Rich could leave me standing, for example. Bit pushed for time now, I'll get back to this later.

 

BillB

[Rich]

Indeed. Altho I'm not sure about the meticulous planning and training which, surprisingly (not!) the prog) does not appear to be touching. I'll have a look at the prog, but having read thru the transcript of the podcast a fair few things occur, such as why they don't actually get someone in who actually knows a bit about the content of the programme. I am pretty sure that I have a better grasp on what/why/when happened on OMAHA than all htree of the folk on the podcast put together and I am a long way from being an expert - I reckon Rich could leave me standing, for example. Bit pushed for time now, I'll get back to this later.

 

BillB

 

More important than anyting was that they landed intact as an organization, A and B 2nd Rangers and the 5th Rangers, between Wn 68 and 70. But the arrival slightly later of the 3rd Battalion, 116th Infantry just to their right, also intact, helped. In the same way the 3rd Battalion, 18th Infantry landing intact further east solidified and exploited the gains already made by Slaughter and the scattered men of the 16th Infantry.

 

BTW, Simon Trew is a good egg and knows his subject, he's on staff at Sandhurst and has done quite a bit of study on D-Day - got me some good info on Germany PW intakes by unit - but like a lot of Brits he doesn't have as much access to or knowledge of some details on the American beaches.

 

Happy New Year!

[Marek Tucan]

I'll have a look at the prog, but having read thru the transcript of the podcast a fair few things occur, such as why they don't actually get someone in who actually knows a bit about the content of the programme.

 

Don't forget they had to set their level of expertise for the podcast on the lowest denominator - the interviewer's level

[KingSargent]

Indeed. Altho I'm not sure about the meticulous planning and training which, surprisingly (not!) the prog) does not appear to be touching. I'll have a look at the prog, but having read thru the transcript of the podcast a fair few things occur, such as why they don't actually get someone in who actually knows a bit about the content of the programme. I am pretty sure that I have a better grasp on what/why/when happened on OMAHA than all htree of the folk on the podcast put together and I am a long way from being an expert - I reckon Rich could leave me standing, for example. Bit pushed for time now, I'll get back to this later.

 

BillB

The assault bns were given detailed models of their assigned areas, and planned and rehearsed their assaults. If they could find similar terrain they rehearsed full-scale. Naturally all this fell in the crapper when nobody landed where they were supposed to. Having the fire support plans get screwed and the armor support go down the drain (literally with the DDs) didn't help either.

 

OMAHA (and the other beaches to a lesser extent) were a case of FUBARed plans and the PBI saving the day. "Elite" troops had little to do with it. The Commandoes didn't link up the beaches like they were supposed to (although the ones that went to boost 6th Abn dun gud). Pont du Hoc was a brilliant feat of arms and totally useless since the guns were not in the emplacements.

[philgollin]

The assault bns were given detailed models of their assigned areas, and planned and rehearsed their assaults. If they could find similar terrain they rehearsed full-scale. Naturally all this fell in the crapper when nobody landed where they were supposed to. Having the fire support plans get screwed and the armor support go down the drain (literally with the DDs) didn't help either.

 

OMAHA (and the other beaches to a lesser extent) were a case of FUBARed plans and the PBI saving the day. "Elite" troops had little to do with it. The Commandoes didn't link up the beaches like they were supposed to (although the ones that went to boost 6th Abn dun gud). Pont du Hoc was a brilliant feat of arms and totally useless since the guns were not in the emplacements.

 

I knew Utah was mixed up I didn't know that Omaha was. What happened ? Suruely the landing beaches had to be approached through mineswept channels, did the navy mess that up ? or was it within the approach that the mistake happened ?

 

(I never really understood how Utah got mixed-up either - again such gross errors just shouldn't have been possible).

[Marek Tucan]

Unmapped currents, bad weather and all that... Utah troops got lucky they arrived on the least defended portion of the beach by mistake, but had the opposition there been substantial, things might have gotten worse as there was just one causeway road inlands compared to two at the original beach.

[BillB]

The assault bns were given detailed models of their assigned areas, and planned and rehearsed their assaults. If they could find similar terrain they rehearsed full-scale. Naturally all this fell in the crapper when nobody landed where they were supposed to. Having the fire support plans get screwed and the armor support go down the drain (literally with the DDs) didn't help either.

 

OMAHA (and the other beaches to a lesser extent) were a case of FUBARed plans and the PBI saving the day. "Elite" troops had little to do with it. The Commandoes didn't link up the beaches like they were supposed to (although the ones that went to boost 6th Abn dun gud). Pont du Hoc was a brilliant feat of arms and totally useless since the guns were not in the emplacements.

Agree with the second part. Ref the bolded bit, do you have any refs for that, because it jibes somewhat with what I found when digging. Not least because of the limited time strictures the US units were operating under.

 

BillB

[Lyle, Bob]

Pont du Hoc was a brilliant feat of arms and totally useless since the guns were not in the emplacements.

IIRC, the guns had displaced several hundred yards, had been missed by recon and bombardment, and were still destroyed by the Rangers before they could interfere with the landings.

[Ken Estes]

I knew Utah was mixed up I didn't know that Omaha was. What happened ? Suruely the landing beaches had to be approached through mineswept channels, did the navy mess that up ? or was it within the approach that the mistake happened ?

 

(I never really understood how Utah got mixed-up either - again such gross errors just shouldn't have been possible).

 

Uh, I have also ridden in an LCVP in a heavy swell and the visibility does suck. The boat has magnetic compass only for its navigation 'suite,' is a single engine/propeller, flat bottom scow. The coastline at both Utah and Omaha, to my reckoning, remains a bit nondescript, and the few points that could have been recognized likely had a lot of smoke and other obscuration about them.

 

The wave guides might have done the right job in aligning the wave, but if not, there is little chance the individual coxwains could have found a beach [no just Omaha, but the colored-numbered one they had assigned within the landing site] on their own, just using piloting skills. I am sure the Germans must have removed all nav aids from the coastline.

 

As for other craft at Normandy, LCA, LCM, LCT don't do much better, the DD tanks we all know about; only LSI size ships likely could have managed the navigation better, and they were not there, or in later.

 

So, landing at the right beach = a bitch.

[BillB]

I knew Utah was mixed up I didn't know that Omaha was. What happened ? Suruely the landing beaches had to be approached through mineswept channels, did the navy mess that up ? or was it within the approach that the mistake happened ?

 

(I never really understood how Utah got mixed-up either - again such gross errors just shouldn't have been possible).

Can't remember about UTAH but IIRC the problem at OMAHA was rougher weather than expected and an unexprectedly fierce current running west to east at an angle that pushed everything eastward. That's what did for the DD tanks - maintaining heading on a designated church spire exposed their weaker sides to the waves and they were swamped. As for the last bit, I think you want to be careful making such glib statements about military ops in wartime. As Ken points out the basic practicalities have a pretty big margin for error, and that is multiplied manifold when dealing with an operation like D-Day. Given the scale and scope of the latter I'm surprised more didn't go wrong.

 

BillB

[Jim Martin]

As being a Ranger myself for many years ive heard all the great history of the Rangers and in just about every major battle from WW2 to the present day includes them some where along the way but u never hear much about them. But when something needed to be done and done now it was always us who did it. Even in Grenada the Rangers dropped in right on top of the Cubans at the airport and secured it then the 82nd arrived by plane and landed then walked off. We also air assaulted in before everyone else in Desert Storm to take some key areas, and i still dont understand why that damn Clinton yanked us out of Somalia, out of all the deployments ive been on that was probably the one we were doing the most good, when we first got there the streets were littered with dead children and we were helping feed them and doing some good but then we lose a few good Rangers that will not be forgotten one day and everyone gets yanked out, the story people dont know alot about is that same day the skinnys took horrible causalties, they wernt very good soldiers they just like to spray and run which made them easy to pick off and were stacking up everywhere. I dont know exact figures myself but they put it at over 1000. They need to have someone tell the full story of the history of some of the Ranger accounts that arnt fully known, another one that comes to my mind is we lost 1 Ranger in Thailand, u probably will never find that one anywhere.

 

Aaron

 

 

Go read the comments posted by Brit soldiers on ARRSE about Somalia, that the Rangers were incompetents who bumbled into an ambush, needlessly slaughtered a bunch of non-combatants, and then recklessly endangered their Pakistani saviors.

 

Real Monday-morning quarterbacks, the Brits. Oh yeah, and their comments are followed with, "And this is why the septics are so bloody dangerous on ops!"

[Jim Martin]

Is there anywhere we in the US can watch this program(me) on Youtube/Google/whatever?

[BillB]

Is there anywhere we in the US can watch this program(me) on Youtube/Google/whatever?

Hasn't been broadcast yet Jim, goes out tonight (Sunday). It might show up on the BBC website somwhere.

 

BTW, ref the post about ARRSE and the Rangers in Mogadishu, when was this? When I saw this come up a bit back there were also folk talking sense and giving a more accurate and sensible perspective too - ISTR Randall and Shughart getting a lot of praise. Also, if I felt inclined I could point out a few comments like that directed at the BA from knuckleheads on this Grate Sight too...

 

BillB

[BillB]

According to an article in The Sunday Torygraph the newly discovered German position is the gun battery at Grandcamp Maisy. I can't seem to paste in the url but if you Google the article title there are some colour pics and a link to a map on the web page.

 

Amateur historian unearths Nazi battery

By Stephen Adams

Last Updated: 2:28am GMT 05/01/2008

 

An amateur British military historian has unearthed a vast underground Nazi gun battery complex thought to have caused carnage during the D-Day landings.

 

Gary Sterne, 43, discovered the huge "Maisy Battery" after he found a crinkled map which fell out of an old pair of US serviceman's trousers at a military memorabilia fair in Stockport.

 

It turned out to be an invasion map for Omaha Beach, which included an area marked "area of high resistance". Mr Sterne, a publisher and collector, believed that this could show the "lost" Nazi gun emplacements, which became buried by nature after the war and could not be located.

 

Experts were divided about the battery's location and most believed that the area where Mr Sterne was looking was nothing but fields. But after travelling to Normandy to search for himself he stumbled across an entrance to the complex in undergrowth.

 

He said: "It sparked my curiosity, because that area was previously thought to be just fields."

 

He discovered an extensive installation "the size of four football pitches", including bunkers, offices, a sizeable field hospital - minus its roof - and housing for 155mm cannon. Trenches surrounding the buildings stretched for a mile and a half.

 

Within hours of the landings on Jun 6, 1944, at least 2,000 Allied troops are thought to have died. In the days that followed, until the Maisy Battery was captured on Jun 9, hundreds more lost their lives. Mr Sterne said he thought shelling from the battery contributed heavily to Allied losses. It was finally captured following aerial bombardment with 2,000lb bombs.

 

The Omaha landings and the loss of life that resulted was dramatised in Steven Spielberg's 1998 blockbuster Saving Private Ryan.

 

Despite being bombed heavily itself, the infrastructure of Maisy Battery - or Grandcamp Maisy, as it was also known - remained largely intact. However, over the years it was lost as nature took hold, and it remained buried in French soil for more than 60 years.

 

The Germans had built a decoy gun emplacement overlooking the area and the location of the real guns which blasted the beach remained unclear until Mr Sterne's find.

 

The father-of-two from Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, has bought a house close to the battery and subsequently spent thousands of pounds buying the 40 acres covering the site from 32 different landowners. He then spent two years excavating the site.

 

Mr Sterne has also contacted veterans of the US 5th Ranger Battalion, who confirmed that they took Maisy Battery from the Germans. They also revealed that they found $4.2?million worth of French francs, which was shared among the men.

 

Mr Sterne now plans to open a museum on the site.

 

The battery will be featured in a documentary for a BBC Timewatch programme, Bloody Omaha, which will be presented by Richard Hammond and broadcast on BBC2 tomorrow at 9pm.

[Jim Martin]

Hasn't been broadcast yet Jim, goes out tonight (Sunday). It might show up on the BBC website somwhere.

 

BTW, ref the post about ARRSE and the Rangers in Mogadishu, when was this? When I saw this come up a bit back there were also folk talking sense and giving a more accurate and sensible perspective too - ISTR Randall and Shughart getting a lot of praise. Also, if I felt inclined I could point out a few comments like that directed at the BA from knuckleheads on this Grate Sight too...

 

BillB

 

 

Black Hawk Down. Trust me. I saw it in the States at Christmas.

Reality - Yanks panic, get shot down, panic some more, decide everyone with black skin is a terrorist, send in Apaches to fire rockets into demonstration slaughtering 90 unarmed men, women and children

Film - Yanks get shot down thanks to bad luck, fight bravely against overwheling odds, against scores of state0of-the-art armed an well trained enemy troops, emerging victorious in the nick of time.

Moral - This is why they're so fecking dangerous on ops.

Not quite a fair summing up of BHD if I might say so.. Here's my version.

 

Newsweek prints photo's of starving African babies and Bill Clinton is pressured into doing something.

Yanks arrive at night on beach in Somalia with camera crews and white light waiting for them.

Media Ops guy gets sacked.

Yanks proceed to live in their camp and fly around in helicopters. Sometimes they get int about meetings of bad guys

Bad guys meet with UN because they're the faction commanders.

Yanks attack a meeting not realising that address is UN HQ

Several dead UN guys

Clinton starts to get wet feet. Maybe the military is trying to make him look bad.

Yanks fearing the Pakistanis are in league with the bad guys launch an Op without telling anyone. Or alternately launch an op and forget anyone else is on the planet apart from them.

Rules of engagement are very strict.

Yanks panic and start hosing down streets

Rules of engagement re-written on the ground to allow use of mini guns from Loaches and generally everything in their arsenal.

Yanks get lost driving around Mog, despite heli cover and the most advanced military equipment in the world.

Yanks, who are their Ranger SF let us remember, continue to hose down anything not wearing a stars and stripes.

Yanks ask the Pak's to come and recover them.

Paki's ask for a shed load of liaison officers to avoid getting brassed up.

Yanks can't understand why Pak's are so blue-on-blue averse...

Yanks die

Somali's die

Pak's die in the rescue

Hollywood re-writes to reflect US good points but skips bad bits. Misses out final casualty list of something like 17 vs 1500.

Bill Clinton gets pressured into removing troops from ungreatful Africa

Serbs etc see that Billy Boy has no will to intervene in conflicts where he might get a body bag in the return mail and kicks of Operation "turn Bosnia into a fcking tomb", rapidly followed by Operation "turn Kosovo into a fcking tomb".

 

Ditto Sierra Leone and any other part of Africa that basically kicked off in the 90's because that dick head's foreign policy was driven entirely by FP and not by doing the right thing. GWB of course went too far the other way...

 

 

http://www.arrse.co.uk/cpgn2/Forums/viewto.../start=330.html

 

And Bill, the more time I hang out on ARRSE, the more cynical I become about the "Special Relationship". There's been some fire on this site directed against the Brits, but from reading ARRSE, nobody in the world is quite so very puh-recious as the British soldier, especially when the "septics" (name says it all) come up. The parochialism and anti-US (sorry, "spam") bigotry rampant on ARRSE is vomit-inducing. Which is why I can only surf for a few days before having to leave the site for 6-12 months before giving it another go.

[A2Keltainen]

Agree with the second part. Ref the bolded bit, do you have any refs for that, because it jibes somewhat with what I found when digging. Not least because of the limited time strictures the US units were operating under.

 

Allied troops, at least Rangers and Commandos, training in full scale mockups of their targets is mentioned in;

 

Alarm i atlantvallen

Bertil Stjernfelt

First edition released in 1953, and a new revised edition released in 2004.

 

although without further source. The author, an officer in the Swedish coastal artillery, travelled the Normandie invasion beaches by bicycle in 1947, and visited basically every meter of the beaches. He also spoke and exchanged letters with several key officers both on the Allied and German sides, and the result is a highly interesting book. Besides the Swedish editions, there's also a French edition of the book released in 1961.

Edited January 6, 2008 by A2Keltainen

[A2Keltainen]

IIRC, the guns had displaced several hundred yards, had been missed by recon and bombardment, and were still destroyed by the Rangers before they could interfere with the landings.

 

Five of the six missing guns from the battery were found well camouflaged about a km south west from their original position, and without a sign of any German crews nearby. All of those five guns were put out of function.

 

Source:

 

Previously mentioned book.

[A2Keltainen]

the more time I hang out on ARRSE, the more cynical I become about the "Special Relationship".

 

IIRC, the whole "special relationship" meme was created, or at least heavily nurtured, by British intelligence in order to gain US support for Britain's wartime efforts, so your cynicism may have some good ground to stand on.

[Rich]

According to an article in The Sunday Torygraph the newly discovered German position is the gun battery at Grandcamp Maisy. I can't seem to paste in the url but if you Google the article title there are some colour pics and a link to a map on the web page.

 

Good to see the Telegraph is as up to snuff on their research as are the US newrags. The "newly discovered" location are WN 83 and 84, the two Maisy batteries of III./Art.-Regt. 1716. One consisted of four 10cm Czech howitzers (the same as at Merville Battery) and the other of six French 15.5cm howitzers (essentially the same as the US M1918). They are actually quite different from the field positions that were prepared for the Point du Hoc guns while their casemates were being built and there is nothing either mysterious or unique about them. Interestingly enough this is about the third or fourth article "revealing" the find over about the last two years since the "discoverer", er, "found" it. Although the bit about the map in the G.I.'s trousers is a new addition to the story I believe?