It was the Rangers what saved the day.

[swerve]

..

The 352nd division was an ordinary field division, while the rest of the troops assigned to the Normandie beaches (the 243rd, 709th, 716th, 711th, and 346th coastal defence divisions) were a mix of the old, the young, the sick/wounded, (mainly Soviet) POWs taken into German service, and other similar bottom-of-the-barrel personnel.

 

"bodenständige" divisions: static units made up of nth-line manpower, with no transport & whatever guns could be culled from conquered countries, stores of WW1 & older equipment, etc.

[philgollin]

As for perfect accuracy, they weren't, esp. close to the coast, they were very prone to getting various kinds of false echos in such conditions.

 

For the convoys - typical convoy craft would be much larger radar target than landing crafts, esp. those of first waves, and would also have much better conditions to maneuver on its own. Also the large coastal radars had plenty of time to calibrate their readings accurately and I won't be surprised if they were helped by some radar reflectors on buoys.

 

Sure, in landing waves weren't just wooden hulled ships and if such guidance was deemed neccessary, it would be possible to mount radar reflectors on pilot ships, but I'm afraid the invasion crafts would be lost in ground clutter long before hitting the beaches. Don't forget that even the sea state was pretty bad and high waves further add to the clutter.

 

No they East Coast convoys were made up of small ships and the local ones included wooden hulled motorised barges. The swept channels were relatively narrow and the navigational radar was invaluable with the lighthouses out of commission.

 

No the 1941 metric (and early centrimetric (10 cms) radars) were less powerful than the 1944 10cms and 3cms ones.

[Argus]

Phil I think the problem comes down to situational awareness and communications. First some one had to be aware there was a problem and has been said the two craft principally charged with this were absent. And then corrective action undertaken, without AFAIK a radio net that extended down to the minor assault craft like LCA's, which would come down to 'conform to flag' stationkeeping and again the two ships for this just weren't there so the chain of control was broken in anycase.

 

So fas as navigation and passing through the minefields goes, to the best of my understanding the swept channels were bouyed and illuminated (lights on the bouys) almost all the way from the departure ports to the start line. IIRC the final bouys at the French end were RN X-Craft fitted for the job with a mast and screened flashing becon. Then every group had a navigational escort along the lines of an Fairmile B with radar Gee and the like. But these weren't going too far inshore for a host of reasons. So just because they could get over in a reasonable order, it didn't make the last streatch any easier.

 

shane

Edited January 7, 2008 by Argus

[philgollin]

Phil I think the problem comes down to situational awareness and communications. First some one had to be aware there was a problem and has been said the two craft principally charged with this were absent. And then corrective action undertaken, without AFAIK a radio net that extended down to the minor assault craft like LCA's, which would come down to 'conform to flag' stationkeeping and again the two ships for this just weren't there so the chain of control was broken in anycase.

 

So fas as navigation and passing through the minefields goes, to the best of my understanding the swept channels were bouyed and illuminated (lights on the bouys) almost all the way from the departure ports to the start line. IIRC the final bouys at the French end were RN X-Craft fitted for the job with a mast and screened flashing becon. Then every group had a navigational escort along the lines of an Fairmile B with radar Gee and the like. But these weren't going too far inshore for a host of reasons. So just because they could get over in a reasonable order, it didn't make the last streatch any easier.

 

shane

 

I am very happy with Rich's very full and useful answers as far as they go - cock-ups happen. What does confuse me a little is that the plans weren't as robust as one might have wanted - but as it was such a vast operation I suppose one shouldn't (and couldn't) expect perfection.

 

The X-craft had special I.R. and, more importantly, acoustic beacons.

 

It is odd that the poor sods were shepherded all the way across and then for the last bit seemed to have less than perfect assistance.

[Ken Estes]

Sorry, you still do not get it. Using a nav radar to navigate down a channel and not end up on the rocks has nothing to do with holding a good plot on a swarm of wooden hulled landing craft. What part of 'good rangetaking, bad in azimuth' radar sets do you not understand? Piloting with radar consists of taking ranges [not bearings] to 3 or more landmarks to determine one's own position. It works fine. This has nothing to do with plotting course and location of a swarm of LC nearing the coastline.

[philgollin]

Sorry, you still do not get it. Using a nav radar to navigate down a channel and not end up on the rocks has nothing to do with holding a good plot on a swarm of wooden hulled landing craft. What part of 'good rangetaking, bad in azimuth' radar sets do you not understand? Piloting with radar consists of taking ranges [not bearings] to 3 or more landmarks to determine one's own position. It works fine. This has nothing to do with plotting course and location of a swarm of LC nearing the coastline.

 

And you do not understand that the East Coast convoys did NOT, in general, have bouyed channels - they navigated off the coast.

 

And not all landing craft were small wooden ones.

 

The normal 3cms sets were very good at spotting U-boat conning towers at several miles (!)

[Rich]

And you do not understand that the East Coast convoys did NOT, in general, have bouyed channels - they navigated off the coast.

 

And not all landing craft were small wooden ones.

 

The normal 3cms sets were very good at spotting U-boat conning towers at several miles (!)

 

Hi Phil! Just to clarify, the problem was that there were simply too many small craft for the headquarters and control vessels to track, especially since intracommunication between the vessels was limited due to the radio silence being maintained. There were also limitations on the numbers of ccraft available with radar systems accurate enough for the purpose (it seems that 3 cm sets were only available on the control and headquarters vessels, landing ships, and naval combatants, AFAICT few of the LCT were so equipped (LCT ® depended on the control vessels plotting a radar beacon placed on the LCT ® and signaling the firing firing point for example, they did not have onboard 3 cm sets), and none of the LCI (L), LCM or smaller were AFAIK. So the method utilized for the crossing and landing was generally to have the specialized control vessels leading and trailing each tactical grouping and then flanking them as guidons once they turned into the beach. So for example, Assault Group UNCLE RED (TF 125.5) on UTAH included:

 

LCH: LCI (L) 10 (F)

APA: USS Barnett and Bayfield

Primary Control Vessel: PC 1261 (snk)

Secondary Control Vessel: LCC 80 (dmg), 90

LCT Flotilla 4, Division 20: LCT (5) 443 (sunk), 474, 475, 486 (snk), 489, and 495

LCT Flotilla 4, Division 21: LCT (5) 3, 362 (snk), 476, and 492

LCT Flotilla 4, Division 21 (DD-Tanks, 70th TK BN): LCT (6) 510

LCT Flotilla 4, Division 23 (DD-Tanks, 70th TK BN): LCT (6) 531

LCT Flotilla 17, Division 67: LCT (6) 580, 581

LCT Flotilla 17, Division 70 (DD-Tanks, 70th TK BN): LCT (6) 596 and 597 (snk)

LCT Flotilla 17, Division 99: LCT (6) 620, 621, 662, 763, 764, and 765

LCT Flotilla 17, Division 100: LCT (6) 663 (dmg), 766, 777 (snk), 809, 810, and 811

LCT Flotilla 17, Division 101: LCT (6) 812, 851, 852, 853, 854, and 855

LCT Flotilla 17, Division 102: LCT (6) 664, 709, 710, 778, 779, and 780

LCT Flotilla 44 RN: LCT IV 651, 753, 755, 756, 800, 954, 965, 966, 967, 969, and 970

LCT Flotilla 50 RN: LCT IV 691, 794, 797, 801, 824, 833, 836, 920, 945, 956, and 975

LCT Flotilla 104 RN: LCT V 2002, 2046, 2055, 2130, 2131, 2272, and 2303

LCT Flotilla 110 RN: LCT V 2004, 2040, 2135, 2138, 2363, 2423, 2429, 2483, 2627, 2188,

2421, 2424, 2437, and 2484 (2498 was also assigned, but capsized 2300 4 June)

 

So in theory one LCH, one primary, and two secondary control vessels to shepard a group consisting of two APA, and 83 LCT in assault waves, plus 22 LCI (L), 25 LCM, 2 RHF) and 15 LST in followup waves. That was fine and there were few problems in the transit (aside from LCC 80 dropping out and LCT 2498 foundering), but once they reached the transport area things got complicated. There the APA and follow-up forces anchored and the assault troops in the APA transferred to their LCVP and the obstacle clearance teams were transferred from the LCT they crossed in to the LCM they were making the asault in, which had been towed across the channel. Once that was done the LCVP waves had to be organized, formed up with the LCT waves and other supporting craft and then guided in to the beach....which was some 11 miles from the transport area due to concerns about the German coastal batteries. And all that in moonlight, the run-in was scheduled to start at 0530 or thereabouts. Then, on the run-in, the control vessels had to ensure the DD tanks were launched at the correct point and then acted as range markers for the supporting LCT ®, indicating when they should fire.

 

And overall that proportion of control to assault vessels appears to have been pretty constant. Now it may have been the bare minimum required, but OTOH the schema worked pretty well on the Commonwealth beaches where the problems of tides and currents were less severe. But it also gets back to the harsh reality the naval planners were operating under....they only had so many craft to work with and an LCI (L) converted to an LCH or LCC was one LCI (L) that was unavailable to transport troops to the tune of about a reinforced company each. So, like everything els in NEPTUNE, the planers had to walk a rightrope between whatthey wanted to do and what they could do.

[Marek Tucan]

The normal 3cms sets were very good at spotting U-boat conning towers at several miles (!)

 

Spotting, yes. Exactly pinpointing, I doubt so. Moreover that was on open sea, not few miles off the coast. I know US radars had experienced troubles in spotting destroyers and cruisers in confined waters in Pacific, I'd guess trouble spotting landing crafts on quite stormy sea and in close proximity to coast would be even more challenging.

 

Re the navigation in Channel, you don't need buoyed passes, still, the situation is significantly easier for the radars:

 

1) generally bigger ships (atleast escorts)

2) Radars facing from land, targets generally on open sea (even in the middle of Dover strait they'd be much farther from the opposite coast than landing crafts)

3) Radar in stable and exactly pinpointed location (as opposed to ships fighting with currents, strenghtened to unknown degree by storm surge from the bottleneck of Channel)

4) Radar having days to exactly calibrate, using watever means possible (radar reflectors on ships, or on buoys)

 

The radar isn't perfect as navigation device today, still it has some flaws, and it was much less perfect back then, esp. in bad weather close to land against small targets.

[philgollin]

Spotting, yes. Exactly pinpointing, I doubt so. Moreover that was on open sea, not few miles off the coast. I know US radars had experienced troubles in spotting destroyers and cruisers in confined waters in Pacific, I'd guess trouble spotting landing crafts on quite stormy sea and in close proximity to coast would be even more challenging.

 

Re the navigation in Channel, you don't need buoyed passes, still, the situation is significantly easier for the radars:

 

1) generally bigger ships (atleast escorts)

2) Radars facing from land, targets generally on open sea (even in the middle of Dover strait they'd be much farther from the opposite coast than landing crafts)

3) Radar in stable and exactly pinpointed location (as opposed to ships fighting with currents, strenghtened to unknown degree by storm surge from the bottleneck of Channel)

4) Radar having days to exactly calibrate, using watever means possible (radar reflectors on ships, or on buoys)

 

The radar isn't perfect as navigation device today, still it has some flaws, and it was much less perfect back then, esp. in bad weather close to land against small targets.

 

No you are mixing things up - the convoys were navigated from corvettes and destroyer Escorts equipped with radar

[Ken Estes]

No you are mixing things up - the convoys were navigated from corvettes and destroyer Escorts equipped with radar

Fine, do you know what technique they used? I gather you do not.

[Marek Tucan]

No you are mixing things up - the convoys were navigated from corvettes and destroyer Escorts equipped with radar

 

 

Ah, my bad, I got impression from your earlier posts that you meant they were navigated by land-based stations.

Then, of course, the whole task gets even simpler. Just set up radar reflectors on known places along the coast, or use landmarks that even don't need the reflectors to be distinguishable. Such navigation aids are independent on weather and currents. With radar giving you reliable ranging, you don't need that much precise heading as you can triangulate. Also you don't have to track the convoy ships. So it bears even less similarity with the task you'd have to fulfill while trying to track landing crafts and correct the course.

[philgollin]

Fine, do you know what technique they used? I gather you do not.

 

Why do you "gather" that ?

 

No - they spotted off fixed objects, normally land features but also, less often, moored vessels. Later in the war proper "radar reflectors" (much like the now old-fashioned 3-d diamond) were invented and used. Soundings were used to confirm movement over channels and sand banks.

 

You seem to imagine that night time coastal vessels wondered around without any idea where they were. This was just not acceptable, especially in restricted waters where there were sand and mud banks, high tidal flows and severe retributions for being out of position.

[philgollin]

Ah, my bad, I got impression from your earlier posts that you meant they were navigated by land-based stations.

Then, of course, the whole task gets even simpler. Just set up radar reflectors on known places along the coast, or use landmarks that even don't need the reflectors to be distinguishable. Such navigation aids are independent on weather and currents. With radar giving you reliable ranging, you don't need that much precise heading as you can triangulate. Also you don't have to track the convoy ships. So it bears even less similarity with the task you'd have to fulfill while trying to track landing crafts and correct the course.

 

No, in 1941 "radra reflectors" as such didn't exist (they were gradually developed later in the war.

 

Yes, they did need to track convoy ships, but before the PPI it was done on an "as-and-when" needed basis. Convoy positioning basically required positioning by individual ships (with splash or smoke floats if required) and escorts patrolling sectors to ensure positions were complete.

 

Triangulation is valid off any coast. And PPI's and 3 cms radar would ensure positioning of major landing craft.

 

I fail to see what point you are making.

[Marek Tucan]

I fail to see what point you are making.

 

The point that it is significantly different to triangulate exact position, speed and course using distinct landmarks and to track and guide with equal precision landing waves moving towards a coast.

[Ken Estes]

The point that it is significantly different to triangulate one's own exact position, speed and course using distinct landmarks and to track and guide with equal precision landing waves moving towards a coast.

There; best said at last. And will the point be taken??

[philgollin]

The point that it is significantly different to triangulate exact position, speed and course using distinct landmarks and to track and guide with equal precision landing waves moving towards a coast.

 

No. Coastal navigation was a common skill, and included understanding the movement of ones own ship due to tides and currents. The radars available could easily track the larger landing craft - although I wonder (??????) whether the radar counter-measures that were used during the crossings were widespread and kept working whilst the landing craft went in ???? They would have been metric and 10cms rather than 3 cms, but if enough jamming was around then that might have had an effect

[philgollin]

There; best said at last. And will the point be taken??

 

No - as incorrect

[Marek Tucan]

No. Coastal navigation was a common skill, and included understanding the movement of ones own ship due to tides and currents. The radars available could easily track the larger landing craft - although I wonder (??????) whether the radar counter-measures that were used during the crossings were widespread and kept working whilst the landing craft went in ???? They would have been metric and 10cms rather than 3 cms, but if enough jamming was around then that might have had an effect

 

Coastal navigation concerned navigating your ship or other ships on rather short range. It didn't involve tracking and precisely guiding masses of small crafts (and yes, first assault waves, where the mistake happened and after which it was decided atleast on Utah to roceed with "wrong" locations to avoid mess, were consisting of smaller crafts), esp. when the entire "let's spot thhem by radar" is strongly problematic due to ground and wave clutter. It would be easier to control bombers that were in large numbers missing their designated targets on the D-Day due to similar reasons the landing crafts went afoul (bad weather, bad visibility, monotone landscape without much landmarks).

 

Let's make a thought experiment.

 

Situation no.1: You have a whistle, precise stop watches, sheet of paper. On paper, you have marked exact locations of say four other people with whistles. Each has his appointed signal to help you distinguish them. You blow first signal, person no. 1 replies immediately. You mark the time and calcullate distance. Repeat with no. 2, 3 and 4. Now you have rough idea on which direction they are, and you have much more precise distances to them. You can easily triangulate your exact position. That is that coastal navigation.

 

Situation no.2: You have a whistle, precise stop watches, sheet of paper. You know more-or-less precisely your location (by applying steps from no.1... Wait, hard, because you have to go under EMCON. But you may still use radiogonimetry to some extent). Now, you have say hundred people with two loud and many weak whistles, all at considerable distance and walking slowly towards a frequent highway. You are moreover disturbed by birds flying low above the area and making whistling sounds, another groups of people with whistles gathering nearby, and a secondary road with traffic here and there between you and "your" group. How are you going to remotely track the advance of your group accurately enough to be giving them precise course?

[Rich]

No. Coastal navigation was a common skill, and included understanding the movement of ones own ship due to tides and currents. The radars available could easily track the larger landing craft - although I wonder (??????) whether the radar counter-measures that were used during the crossings were widespread and kept working whilst the landing craft went in ???? They would have been metric and 10cms rather than 3 cms, but if enough jamming was around then that might have had an effect

 

Phil, I think you are missing the point? The crossing employed standard navigation methods then, including radio triangulation, visual plots of bearings, radar plots of bearings, marking of swept channels through the mid-Channel German minefields with Danbuoys, which were also utilized as general route and waypoint markers. The ONS instructions also emphasized the need to allow for the mid-Channel currents. But all that was relatively simple, since virtually all the vessels making the crossing were LCT or larger (LCM were towed or hauled and all the smaller craft were hauled), which both reduced - slightly - the number of vessels required to control and made it simpler since most - if not all - the vessels in the movement columns had recourse to those navigation aides and methods themselves or merely had to guide on ships in a column in front and behind them.

 

But from the transport anchorage forward things got much more complicated. Large numbers of very small craft were added to the equation, most of which had no navigation aides other than the Mark I Eyeball, and they had to approach the coast in successive waves, station keeping on their peers and the whole lot guiding on the larger assault craft (which delineated the waves), which in turn were to guide on the control vessels, which were responsible for alignment of the waves and navigation, as well as tracking the distance from the coast (for the LCT ® and also to govern the speed of advance). So a lot to do with vessels that had pretty small crews, many of which were pretty newly trained, working with navigation equipment - if they had it - that required quite a bit of training and experience to use properly.

 

Now it may be significant that all this hoo-fra about "messing up" the landings is based upon the identified problem at UTAH (loss of control vessels) where the entire invasion wave touched down in good order, but in the wrong place and the individual instances of various of the assault wave LCVP misslanding on OMAHA. But at OMAHA all the larger craft landed more or less at the correct point, and quite few of the LCA/LCVP groups landed more or less correctly. So it looks like it was a problem with the individual small craft, which was not a problem that could have been easily solved by the means available to them.

[philgollin]

Coastal navigation concerned navigating your ship or other ships on rather short range. It didn't involve tracking and precisely guiding masses of small crafts (and yes, first assault waves, where the mistake happened and after which it was decided atleast on Utah to roceed with "wrong" locations to avoid mess, were consisting of smaller crafts), esp. when the entire "let's spot thhem by radar" is strongly problematic due to ground and wave clutter. It would be easier to control bombers that were in large numbers missing their designated targets on the D-Day due to similar reasons the landing crafts went afoul (bad weather, bad visibility, monotone landscape without much landmarks).

 

Let's make a thought experiment.

 

Situation no.1: You have a whistle, precise stop watches, sheet of paper. On paper, you have marked exact locations of say four other people with whistles. Each has his appointed signal to help you distinguish them. You blow first signal, person no. 1 replies immediately. You mark the time and calcullate distance. Repeat with no. 2, 3 and 4. Now you have rough idea on which direction they are, and you have much more precise distances to them. You can easily triangulate your exact position. That is that coastal navigation.

 

Situation no.2: You have a whistle, precise stop watches, sheet of paper. You know more-or-less precisely your location (by applying steps from no.1... Wait, hard, because you have to go under EMCON. But you may still use radiogonimetry to some extent). Now, you have say hundred people with two loud and many weak whistles, all at considerable distance and walking slowly towards a frequent highway. You are moreover disturbed by birds flying low above the area and making whistling sounds, another groups of people with whistles gathering nearby, and a secondary road with traffic here and there between you and "your" group. How are you going to remotely track the advance of your group accurately enough to be giving them precise course?

 

You are imagining coastal navigation wrongly. The Utah mess was very well explained by Rich. The Omaha has a reasonable explaination from Rich other than the lack of naval/assault interface.

[philgollin]

Phil, I think you are missing the point? The crossing employed standard navigation methods then, including radio triangulation, visual plots of bearings, radar plots of bearings, marking of swept channels through the mid-Channel German minefields with Danbuoys, which were also utilized as general route and waypoint markers. The ONS instructions also emphasized the need to allow for the mid-Channel currents. But all that was relatively simple, since virtually all the vessels making the crossing were LCT or larger (LCM were towed or hauled and all the smaller craft were hauled), which both reduced - slightly - the number of vessels required to control and made it simpler since most - if not all - the vessels in the movement columns had recourse to those navigation aides and methods themselves or merely had to guide on ships in a column in front and behind them.

 

But from the transport anchorage forward things got much more complicated. Large numbers of very small craft were added to the equation, most of which had no navigation aides other than the Mark I Eyeball, and they had to approach the coast in successive waves, station keeping on their peers and the whole lot guiding on the larger assault craft (which delineated the waves), which in turn were to guide on the control vessels, which were responsible for alignment of the waves and navigation, as well as tracking the distance from the coast (for the LCT ® and also to govern the speed of advance). So a lot to do with vessels that had pretty small crews, many of which were pretty newly trained, working with navigation equipment - if they had it - that required quite a bit of training and experience to use properly.

 

Now it may be significant that all this hoo-fra about "messing up" the landings is based upon the identified problem at UTAH (loss of control vessels) where the entire invasion wave touched down in good order, but in the wrong place and the individual instances of various of the assault wave LCVP misslanding on OMAHA. But at OMAHA all the larger craft landed more or less at the correct point, and quite few of the LCA/LCVP groups landed more or less correctly. So it looks like it was a problem with the individual small craft, which was not a problem that could have been easily solved by the means available to them.

 

I think your explanation for Utah was very informative - no problem there - a concatonation of foul-ups (a shame there were not enough back-ups, but it was a huge operation and these things happen)

 

Likewise, your explanation in previous posts and with this one for Omaha are useful (and informative) - but you actually re-raise (?) the issue of what actually went "wrong" at Omaha. If the larger craft landed near-enough correctly, why did the LCA/LCVP groups lose station on the run-in ? You SEEM to be hinting that the training of the small craft may have been insufficient ?

[shep854]

There; best said at last. And will the point be taken??

 

Phil's been drinkin' the Kool-Aid...

[Rich]

Likewise, your explanation in previous posts and with this one for Omaha are useful (and informative) - but you actually re-raise (?) the issue of what actually went "wrong" at Omaha. If the larger craft landed near-enough correctly, why did the LCA/LCVP groups lose station on the run-in ? You SEEM to be hinting that the training of the small craft may have been insufficient ?

 

Er, no, I'm doing nothing of the sort? I've already given a number of the reasons. The LCA/LCVP were entirely dependent on visual landmarks on the shore and visual stationkeeping with the larger craft. Visibility was very poor, it was dark, although they had trained for that, but the high winds were both generating higher waves and currents, but also were causing extensive spray and mist. Brush fires on the shore also obscured landmarks and accompanying each assault group were LCS (S), landing craft support (smoke) mounting smoke generators, which proved to be ineffective in their purpose also due to the wind, but which also added to the low visibility. And of course the LCA/LCVP were low to the water, also reducing the coxswains visibility.

 

But also, and which may not have been clear, the LCA/LCVP assault waves on OMAHA (the initial infantry companies) were timed to come in a minute later than the LCT carrying the wading tanks landing at H-Hour, which isn't much - call it 50 yards or so, but may have made the difference, they simply may not have been able to maintain station with the LCT and once they lost visual contact with where they were supposed to be they had no reference for corrections.

 

Oh, another minor point I forgot to mention....the Germans were shooting at them and hitting them.

 

So what was the result? A Company, 116th Infantry on DOG GREEN was nearly spot on....and got massacred (in some cases landing in the wrong spot was actually something of a blessing). But G of the 116th, next in line on DOG WHITE, landed nearly intact, but almost 1,000 yeards eastward. F of the 116th next to them on DOG RED only missed by about 200 yards and straddled DOG RED and EASY GREEN. E of the 116th intended for EASY GREEN got scattered in two groups on EASY RED and FOX GREEN up to 3,000 yards away from where they were supposed to be. The story in the 16th Infantry was similar E Company, alongside of E of the 116th, also got scattered, up to 2,500 yards east and were also split into two groups on EASY RED and FOX GREEN. F of the 16th didn't fare as badly, only shifting a few hundred yards east of their intended touchdown and they managed to stay together, but I of the 16th, next in the line, got pushed all the way nearly to Port-en-Bessin!, while L Company didn't do quite as bad.

 

So I think it was a combination of poor visibility, a really wicked and powerful current that was at its strongest right opposite St Laurent and Colleville, being under fire, and possibly more or less capability and experience in some of the boat crews.

[KingSargent]

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

Not specifically off the top of my head, but I've seen it in several books.

 

And WHAT time constraints? The US assault divisions had been sitting in Blighty and rehearsing for months. The Brits and Canadians longer.

 

A good part of the delay on the British beaches was that the unit COs kept getting shot, leading to a certain amount of loss of command control, especially movement delays.

 

Sorry to be late, Haven't been up for a few days.

[KingSargent]

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.

I believe they were just parked and unmanned. I don't know if there was ammo and communications available to them. They were not liable to do much interfering.