Question about D-Day

[XemaSab]

How did the Allies get up the cliffs?

All the pictures I've seen of Normandy make it look like you'd be stuck at the base of the cliffs like sitting ducks. :shrug:

[bbinacan]

1. My guess is

ladders and ropes.

[Recursion]

2. Ladders (pic included)

You can see the guy on the left carrying a ladder in this one:

[BigBluenoser]

4. They also had Hobart's Funnies...

But I don't think even they could do cliffs (or even many of the things they were designed to do very well!)

I'm gonna go google for some pics... brb...




Wheeeee... neat tanks :)

[RoyGBiv]

5. Pointe du Hoc was hell ...

I have tried many times just to imagine having to do that with people firing down at me, and I just can't do it.

I don't imagine anyone can. I've read accounts of soldiers who were in the first wave and survived, and even they don't all seem sure how they did it.

[uppityperson]

3. Some places it was low bank, some places through cuts, at La Pointe du Hoc

they had to go up ladders, here's more info on that:
http://www.normandie44lamemoire.com/versionanglaise/fichesvillesus/pointduhus2.html
La Pointe du Hoc on the Norman coast was a strategic objective in the sector of Omaha Beach. The Germans had built there a major coastal battery that could threaten the Landing beaches. On 6 June 1944 at 5:45 a. m., Colonel Rudder’s 2nd Rangers Battalion transfered in the landing ships, three assault crafts out of twelve transporting the men sank before reaching the coast. With fitted ladders and grabs the Rangers climbed the cliff under German machine-guns fire. At the top they discovered a lunar landscape and they noted the absence of the guns in their hollows. The next day the Rangers found the guns in a path beyond the coast road and attempted to destroy them. In the evening of 7 June, after a mercyless fighting 90 men out of 225 Colonel Rudder’s battalion were still able to fight. On 8 June the 29th Infantry Division arrived from the east and relieved the Rangers after two days beleaguering.


Some places you just walk up and the rise is minimal. Here is a picture of Utah beach in recent times on a stormy day. Notice the bunkers at the edge of the grass:

[Captain Hilts]

6. Ladders and repelling. Most dangerous job of all landers. Yes, they were sitting ducks.

This is why the beaches assigned to the US - Omaha and Utah - had far higher casualty rates than Sword, Juno or Gold.

[Aristus]

7. Another reason for the high casualties at Omaha was a completely understandable

intelligence failure.

The Allies determined that that sector of the coast was manned by a very low-readiness unit composed of conscripts from, believe it or not, the Eastern European nations that Germany had invaded and occupied. So all of the preparations, bomb runs, Naval artillery prep, number of troops and tanks in the first wave, etc. were based on that piece of intelligence. A few day before D-Day, the Germans reinforced the sector with a veteran unit of German infantry; high morale, high readiness, the whole bit. The Allies did not have time to uncover that piece of information and change their preparations accordingly. A lot of the troops got into the assault craft believing every Axis soldier manning the coast on their sector was dead.

Source: 'The Second Front'. Time-Life Books World War II Series volume on the D-Day landings.