What caused the American deaths on Omaha Beach?

Answer 1

Many people died on all of the five beaches where the invasion took place (codenamed Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword) but Omaha is known as the bloodiest of them all.Back then, the US Army stated that roughly two thousand people were killed, but historians nowadays think that number was closer to five and a half thousand.Shortly before the invasion, massive bombings of the German defenses was planned. For an hour, the US Air Force and the battleships cruising a few miles from there dropped huge amounts of bombs and shells on the coastline. That was supposed to anihilate any resistance from the Nazis. But it didn't quite go as planned. The USAF "precision bombings" weren't all that precise and at the end of that hour-long bombing run, the German defenses were totally intact.That's one thing. The other is that the Intel on which the decision of landing on Omaha beach was based on dated back to 1943. In the meantime, Rommel was appointed by Hitler to beef up the "Atlantic Wall" and that guy knew that the Allies were going to land there (fortunatly, no one else was on his side, thanks to the English deception plan that convinced the Germans the invasion would take place further East near Calais). So actually, the defenses near that beach were far stronger than the Allies thought they would be.If you add to that the fact that when landing, the soldiers had to cross a thousand feet long pre-sighted open sand area, you start to picture what a terrible disaster it could have been.And almost was in fact. The troops on the beach were pinned down by the machine guns and the many 88 and up cal. guns that were scattered all around, sometimes miles inland.The miracle happened when a five hundred men US Ranger group landed (that's a miracle because they were forced to go to "plan B" when another group who landed near the Pointe du Hoc came in late and failed to send the signal for them to go in too).These men (by another miracle) missed their landing zone, were able to cross the beach and took the Germans by their flank and from behind, allowing the first waves that were pinned down on Omaha to move. Unfortunatly, in the meantime, several thousand people had been killed on what is remenbered as "Bloody Omaha".