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Post here with any anecdotes or stories about the Omaha Beach landings on 6th June 1944…
The Omaha landing suffered from a lack of US bunker-busting landing craft support vessels that the US did deploy for Pacific theatre landings, but were not there on D-day, sadly.
This photo shows the 3-inch calibre bow gun of a USS Landing Craft Support vessel – the USS LCS 102 that could have targeted Omaha beach’s German pillboxes and bunkers, had they been deployed on D-day.
In addition, the supposedly amphibious Duplex Drive tanks were not sea-worthy and so the Landing Craft, Tanks should have carried standard tanks and landed them directly on the beach, like this.
At best the DD tanks could have been used when landed directly on a sandbar separated from beach proper by short stretch of shallow water, which the DD tanks could traverse easily enough. DD tanks should never have been launched into the sea.
So the US should have deployed such landing craft support vessels, sending them in first, along with the Landing Craft Tanks, backed up with destroyers, like the USS McCook firing their 5-inch guns.
Later, only after all the pill boxes and bunkers that they could see were knocked out then send in the landing craft to unload the infantry who would only have German indirect fire to worry about as they crossed the beach.
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