Omaha beach - a tough nut to crack

You can get some sense of how difficult this beach turned out to be on D-Day even today. With the tide out there is an inviting stretch of sand - which was covered in defensive traps and installations on the day - and then sand dunes. Today some of those have been 'lost' to development but at the far end you can still get more of a picture of what it looked like. What you cannot really get from the photos is the sense of height behind the dunes and the advantage that gave the defender. There were natural 'draws' leading away from the beach and through those heights - but there were only a few of them, the defenders knew they were there and they built forbidding defences to make them very hard to use.

 

So this is Omaha beach looking west back toward Pointe Du Hoc. Ignore the (admittedly very nice) beachfront property and modern sea defences. You can see the heights all along the beach front.

 

 

 

So this is one of the 'draws' or the way of the beach. You can see the modern road in the background. The boulders are modern but behind them is a concrete bunker. It was these sorts of defences that had been placed to protect the ways off the beach - and despite all the bombing and shelling most were functional on D-Day.

 

 

This is looking down on a different (but typical) defensive emplacement to the one above. My observation is that this is very difficult terrain to move in, the defenders had lots of advantages and they made them count. The efforts to get off the beaches were immense.

 

So if you do watch Private Ryan at some point this is what they were trying to recreate on film. Uphill, defenders have you covered, someone has to do something incredible to make a difference. And there were lots of real 'Private Ryans'.

 

Wiki the following

 

Colonel Rudder - US Rangers

 

Preston and Robert Niland