It was the Rangers what saved the day.

[KingSargent]

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.

There is also the consideration that the vessels "shepherded across the Channel" were the TRANSPORTS that carried the landing craft. I have found no reference to the SHIPS being misplaced, they had trained navigators and equipment. The landing craft, OTOH, had a coxn's mate, a compass, and no radio. They were small enough to be affected by coastal currents that big ships wouldn't notice. To provide direction (what Gollum desires) a control craft had to go alongside each boat and yell instructions.

[Rich]

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.

 

BTW, was just working on my 1st Assault Brigade, R.E, article and just ran across a comment from the 26th Assault Squadron complaining that the crossing was horrible, that Royal Navy station keeping was awful, and that three of his four troops were misslaid by 150 to 250 yards.

 

So I guess the LCT were having problems too.

[Marek Tucan]

You are imagining coastal navigation wrongly.

 

You yourself did confirm that radar in coastal navigation was used to take positions of known landmarks. When the radar gives you more accurately range than direction, the method described by me seems to be the simplest and pretty reliable. Take a map, make range circles from the known landmarks based on radar echos, voila, you are in the intersection.

 

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.

 

Agree, and nothing I wrote contradicts it - rather supports it because I am concentrating on why it would be neigh impossible to use radar to guide in landing waves.

[Ken Estes]

You yourself did confirm that radar in coastal navigation was used to take positions of known landmarks. When the radar gives you more accurately range than direction, the method described by me seems to be the simplest and pretty reliable. Take a map, make range circles from the known landmarks based on radar echos, voila, you are in the intersection.

Agree, and nothing I wrote contradicts it - rather supports it because I am concentrating on why it would be neigh impossible to use radar to guide in landing waves.

Once again, you have it correctly, and now??

[philgollin]

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.

 

Thanks - so SIMPLY - the LCAs/LCVPs were meant to keep station on the larger craft and it didn't work in practice.

[Rich]

Thanks - so SIMPLY - the LCAs/LCVPs were meant to keep station on the larger craft and it didn't work in practice.

 

Pretty much. And given the limitations in place and the circumstances of the invasion, I don't think there was any practical way that these problems cold have been solved such that the landings would all - or mostly - have occurred in the correct place.

 

Not that that would have been neccessarily a good thing anyway in retrospect.

[BillB]

Thanks - so SIMPLY - the LCAs/LCVPs were meant to keep station on the larger craft and it didn't work in practice.

Which is in essence what I told you a way back I believe. Tell me Phil, when you ask someone in the street for the time, do you then demand a long involved explanation about how the Earth orbits the Sun, how the Earth spins on its axis etc etc? If not why did you come into this thread, admit you know absolutely zilch about the subject matter and ask for info, and then treat everyone with the courtesy to respond as if they are either lying or as ignorant as you?

 

BillB

[BillB]

The "command vessels" I think you mean were Augusta (TF 122), Ancon (TF 124), Bayfield (TF 125), Bulolo (Assault Force G), Hilary (Assault Force J), Largs (Assault Force S), Apollo (ANCXF), and Scylla (Eastern Naval Task Force Commander) were just that - command ships - they were not intended to be guidance vessels. That role was taken Primary and Secondary Control vessels, which were usually PCs or LCI (L) fitted as command and control ships, so denoted officially as LCC (on the Commonwealth beaches frigates were also used as command vessels). The proximate causes of the misslanding at UTAH were the sea conditions - the unexpectedly swift current caused by the storms running north to south - and the loss of a Primary Control vessel to a mine, PC-1261, assigned to TARE RED. That would have been okay, except that the Secondary Control vessel LCC-80, had fouled her screws putting out of port. Worse, LCC-80 was also the left guide for the TARE RED assault group and because she was absent, PC-1261 had also taken that position. So when she went down there was no Primary or Secondary vessel for TARE RED. LCC-90 was the backup secondary control vessel, but was unaware that PC-1261 had went down and was positioned as the right control vessel, so was out of position to prevent the drift southwards (to the left). The curious thing is that the TARE GREEN control group (PC-1176, and LCC-60 and 70) apparently decided to conform to the movement of the TARE RED group, evidently deciding they knew what they were doing, but then did attempt to have LCC-60 take over as the Primary Control for TARE RED when it was realized that PC-1261 had gone down. The upshot of the various missteps was that the entire formation drifted 1,000 to 1,500 yards south of the intended touchdown point, despite the use of "special navigation equipment."

No mate, I should have put flagships rather than command ships, my brain wasn't working properly when I typed that. I meant the flagships commanding the Eastern & Western Task Forces, the cruisers Augusta and Scylla. I was assuming (prolly erroneously) that they would have been the only ones netted in to talk to the big vessels of the bombardment force that Phil seems to think ought to have been aware of the unexpectedly strong currents and the command ships/landing craft. I also assumed that the folk on the flagships would have been the only ones with enough authority to be monkeying around with the plan had they been able to disseminate the into as Phil seems to think they coulda/shoulda.

 

BillB

[philgollin]

Which is in essence what I told you a way back I believe. Tell me Phil, when you ask someone in the street for the time, do you then demand a long involved explanation about how the Earth orbits the Sun, how the Earth spins on its axis etc etc? If not why did you come into this thread, admit you know absolutely zilch about the subject matter and ask for info, and then treat everyone with the courtesy to respond as if they are either lying or as ignorant as you?

 

BillB

 

No, because some people here were making very silly statements about coastal navigation

[philgollin]

No mate, I should have put flagships rather than command ships, my brain wasn't working properly when I typed that. I meant the flagships commanding the Eastern & Western Task Forces, the cruisers Augusta and Scylla. I was assuming (prolly erroneously) that they would have been the only ones netted in to talk to the big vessels of the bombardment force that Phil seems to think ought to have been aware of the unexpectedly strong currents and the command ships/landing craft. I also assumed that the folk on the flagships would have been the only ones with enough authority to be monkeying around with the plan had they been able to disseminate the into as Phil seems to think they coulda/shoulda.

 

BillB

 

No, even I know that the navigational skills were more widespread than you seem to think. There are some very strange ideas here about how competent (or not) individual ships were with regards to knowing there own passage through the water - mines have a way of conscentrating minds.

 

Rich has given a very good description of the collection of foul-ups at Utah and of the rather unfortunate problem at Omaha. You, I believe, do not quite grasp the complexity of the "shepherding" that Rich detailed.

.

[BillB]

No, even I know that the navigational skills were more widespread than you seem to think. There are some very strange ideas here about how competent (or not) individual ships were with regards to knowing there own passage through the water - mines have a way of conscentrating minds.

 

Rich has given a very good description of the collection of foul-ups at Utah and of the rather unfortunate problem at Omaha. You, I believe, do not quite grasp the complexity of the "shepherding" that Rich detailed.

.

You, I believe, have not seen the in depth discussions Rich and I had about this topic at the time my book about the D-Day landings came out, which I think suggests rather differently. And I also point out that the only one in here with strange ideas about navigational skills with specific reference to the matter under dicussion is your good self, as you have been obliged to grudgingly admit. And that still does not explain or excuse your boorish and rude attitude whan coming from a self-admitted position of ignorance either, does it, Phil.

 

BillB

[BillB]

No, because some people here were making very silly statements about coastal navigation

Stick to the discussion at hand Phil, not the track you have attempted to draw it down instead. My earlier explanation of what went "wrong" on UTAH and OMAHA in response to a request from you came before that and said what Rich says in a nutshell. You are the one who has been throwing all sorts of ill-informed nonsense about regarding what the Navy were doing and how they were at fault etc etc despite admitting that you know nothing about the topic. I, foolishly and erroneouly, assumed your enquiry was in a genuine quest for knowledge, whereas as usual it was merely a pretext for you to derail an interesting and potentially informative thread by provoking yet another of your tedious, obtuse and ultimately sterile arguments. So do one.

 

BillB

[Ken Estes]

No, because some people here were making very silly statements about coastal navigation

 

Uh, that would likely be you, viz:

 

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.

 

 

"Spotted off" - is that a technique? Are you using Dutton's or Bowditch to get that? Radar navigation did not, in those days, spot anything on land. Piloting uses bearings taken off recognizable and charted objects on land to triangulate one's own position [rarely anybody else's], whereas radar navigation could only use ranging, not reliable bearings. Soundings [not reliable unless the seabed remains stable, thus not in most shallows], of course would have been used only if (1) you are totally lost and have not a clue, or you just want that last bit of confidence in your trangulation. I don't seem to imagine anything, Phil. I have done it, day and night, from destroyers in the Carib and the Med, not to speak of home waters in patrol craft; also celestial, of course.

Edited January 11, 2008 by Ken Estes

[philgollin]

Uh, that would likely be you, viz:

"Spotted off" - is that a technique? Are you using Dutton's or Bowditch to get that? Radar navigation did not, in those days, spot anything on land. Piloting uses bearings taken off recognizable and charted objects on land to triangulate one's own position [rarely anybody else's], whereas radar navigation could only use ranging, not reliable bearings. Soundings [not reliable unless the seabed remains stable, thus not in most shallows], of course would have been used only if (1) you are totally lost and have not a clue, or you just want that last bit of confidence in your trangulation. I don't seem to imagine anything, Phil. I have done it, day and night, from destroyers in the Carib and the Med, not to speak of home waters in patrol craft; also celestial, of course.

 

I don't know where you get that information, as it is totally wrong. RN Coastal navigation as early as 1941 was using fixed land marks by radar. There is also a very interesting DVD available containing a 1945 RN training film demonstrating fire support techniques using air spotting which shows the cruiser using radar and landmarks to fix its position.

 

There still seems a lot of poor navigational information around.

[Ken Estes]

I don't know where you get that information, as it is totally wrong. RN Coastal navigation as early as 1941 was using fixed land marks by radar. There is also a very interesting DVD available containing a 1945 RN training film demonstrating fire support techniques using air spotting which shows the cruiser using radar and landmarks to fix its position.

 

There still seems a lot of poor navigational information around.

Totally wrong, eh?? Nobody objects to the idea that "RN Coastal navigation as early as 1941 was using fixed land marks by radar." But to say one is navigating by radar requires more than, 'oh, Daffy Point is up ahead, two points to starboard.' You have been arguing before that WWII ships used radar for piloting, and at Normandy ought to have tracked the landing waves by radar to keep them on assigned courses. I asserted that surface radar of the period was accurate only in ranging for radar piloting, hence could not do the job of monitoring landing craft waves.

 

What you describe above is a special technique used by fire support ships, assigning a radar director to lock on a land object [usually identified by sight, not radar, hence not for nav in fog] with sufficient return, then maintain continuous tracking, and feeding into offset fire control gun orders to hit the land target grid. As a by-product, one also gains ship's position for nav plot. Nothing more than continuous bearing/range feed from a fire control radar, which has distinctly different properties [i.e. reliable bearing] than a surface nav radar.

 

For a cruiser, works fine, but you will not find this done by the transport force, nor landing craft. To use only that for navigation would require lighting off the director for long periods of time to continuously locate and track successive land points along the coast. In a fire support setting, the ship usually runs back and forth in its assigned sector, not required to break lock on the single reference point, or maybe two of them.

 

By the 1960s, I do know that the RN was using higher frequency sets than the USN for their nav radars and did take bearings as well as ranges, but I seriously doubt any surface set in WWII had those characteristics, such that they could triangulate by bearings. Ever notice the size of the surface blip in WWII film and how much bearing it extended? You need precision bearings for piloting, not + or - 2 degrees!

[philgollin]

Totally wrong, eh?? Nobody objects to the idea that "RN Coastal navigation as early as 1941 was using fixed land marks by radar." But to say one is navigating by radar requires more than, 'oh, Daffy Point is up ahead, two points to starboard.' You have been arguing before that WWII ships used radar for piloting, and at Normandy ought to have tracked the landing waves by radar to keep them on assigned courses. I asserted that surface radar of the period was accurate only in ranging for radar piloting, hence could not do the job of monitoring landing craft waves.

 

What you describe above is a special technique used by fire support ships, assigning a radar director to lock on a land object [usually identified by sight, not radar, hence not for nav in fog] with sufficient return, then maintain continuous tracking, and feeding into offset fire control gun orders to hit the land target grid. As a by-product, one also gains ship's position for nav plot. Nothing more than continuous bearing/range feed from a fire control radar, which has distinctly different properties [i.e. reliable bearing] than a surface nav radar.

 

For a cruiser, works fine, but you will not find this done by the transport force, nor landing craft. To use only that for navigation would require lighting off the director for long periods of time to continuously locate and track successive land points along the coast. In a fire support setting, the ship usually runs back and forth in its assigned sector, not required to break lock on the single reference point, or maybe two of them.

 

By the 1960s, I do know that the RN was using higher frequency sets than the USN for their nav radars and did take bearings as well as ranges, but I seriously doubt any surface set in WWII had those characteristics, such that they could triangulate by bearings. Ever notice the size of the surface blip in WWII film and how much bearing it extended? You need precision bearings for piloting, not + or - 2 degrees!

 

No it was NOT a special technique only for fire support ships, but widespread as early as 1941 using metric and 10 cms radars.

Navigation in coastal waters (as explained above) apart from ordinary plotting of ones own course used charts for depth of water, tidal charts and current charts - and when it became available radar plotting - coastal navigation was (and to a more limited extent nowadays is) a complicated subject (indeed one of the main specialisations in the RN) - and taking laden vessels over areas that could become too shallow at low tide, let alone minefields.

 

You just do not know what you are talking about

[Briganza]

I have always wondered why they did not mark certain points with coloured smk. I know the beach was wide but a centre axis of red with green on the north and orange on the south and another a half way between. It would at least break the beach up and give reference point to keep on track. You know that you should be landing to the north of the red smk and south of the green. The larger ships with better ability in navigation could lay this.

 

Or is this too complicated?

[shep854]

I have always wondered why they did not mark certain points with coloured smk. I know the beach was wide but a centre axis of red with green on the north and orange on the south and another a half way between. It would at least break the beach up and give reference point to keep on track. You know that you should be landing to the north of the red smk and south of the green. The larger ships with better ability in navigation could lay this.

 

Or is this too complicated?

 

I would think that with wind, fog, haze, "regular" smoke in all its forms, colored smoke would be very difficult if not impossible to see or guide on.

[Marek Tucan]

I would think that with wind, fog, haze, "regular" smoke in all its forms, colored smoke would be very difficult if not impossible to see or guide on.

 

 

Not to mention it would also hint the enemy as where to fire, and Germans would be able to see it much better than the landing crafts crews

[Briganza]

I would think that with wind, fog, haze, "regular" smoke in all its forms, colored smoke would be very difficult if not impossible to see or guide on.

 

I accept your points but would they attack in fog or very high winds. Also you are looking at 1000s of meters apart and not just hand held signal smk but bright colours fired from a batteries of 8in guns constantly on a very small area, say a 100m.

 

Not to mention it would also hint the enemy as where to fire, and Germans would be able to see it much better than the landing crafts crews (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

 

I think the bombardment and very large fleet gave the game away long before five smk plums that don’t necessarily have to be on land. I think I remember seeing on a Hollywood film, yes I know an excellent reference, the USMC using coloured dye to mark the approach.

[Ken Estes]

I accept your points but would they attack in fog or very high winds. Also you are looking at 1000s of meters apart and not just hand held signal smk but bright colours fired from a batteries of 8in guns constantly on a very small area, say a 100m.

I think the bombardment and very large fleet gave the game away long before five smk plums that don’t necessarily have to be on land. I think I remember seeing on a Hollywood film, yes I know an excellent reference, the USMC using coloured dye to mark the approach.

 

Shore bombardment doctrine varied to the extreme between USN Pacific and Atlantic. Attacking a continental opponent, one can barely afford a 30 min bombardment because the defender's reinforcements will decide the battle more than the immediate forces in play. In the Pacific, the isolated atolls and islands could receive up to 2 weeks of preparation. Normandy offered strategic isolation of the battlefield via air and transport interdiction, but nothig could be done to prevent reinforcement of the beaches by local mobile reserves, except for the deliberate use of paratroops as speed bumps, or real barriers if bridges could be used to advantage. Elsewhere in ETO/MTO, operational reserves or their failures decided the day: So France, Anzio, Salerno and Sicily. This is one reason why MajGen Corlett's excellent advice on NGF [commanded 7th ID at Kwajelein] was ignored at Normandy.