The Allies had made successful landings in North Africa and Italy, but none had involved beaches as heavily defended as those in Normandy. “We cannot afford to fail,” Supreme Commander Dwight D. If the invasion failed, it would be many months, at least, before the Allies could gather the resources to try again. THE RESOURCES COMMITTED to the operation were staggering-132,000 soldiers and 23,000 paratroopers would land on D-Day alone, supported by nearly 12,000 planes and more than 6,000 ships. Eisenhower (seated, center) and other leaders of the Allied Expeditionary Force organized history’s largest invasion.© IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS, TR 1631 A multitude of British and American army, navy, and air force officers had a finger in the invasion pie and, Cota said, “nothing can move so fast from the simple to the complex as a Combined Operation.” The greatest danger, he believed, was overthinking the plan.
He was all infantryman, as skilled at leading a squad as at planning an invasion.Īs the planning for Neptune shifted into gear in June 1943, Cota warned his colleagues that the invasion plan must be “thoroughly honest and simple” and rely “on the experience of those who have tried this thing before.” Above all, he warned, it must include a sufficient margin of error-what he called “factors of safety”-for the unexpected mishaps that inevitably occur. As chief of staff of the 1st Infantry Division, he had helped plan and execute the successful North Africa landings in November 1942. In February 1943, Norman Cota, a 1917 West Point graduate, was given his first star and assigned to the Allied invasion-planning staff at Combined Operations Headquarters. But Omaha Beach had to be taken to avoid leaving a vulnerable gap between Utah Beach directly to the west and the three British-Canadian beaches to the east. Gunners in eight casements- with concrete walls three or more feet thick and housing guns 75mm or bigger-85 machine-gun positions, 35 pillboxes, 38 rocket pits, and six mortar positions all trained their sights on the shore, while ditches, walls, barbed wire, and minefields blocked Allied troops and vehicles from climbing the bluffs. The Germans heavily fortified these bluffs, focusing maximum firepower on the beach. Steep sandy bluffs, rising 100 to 170 feet, overlooked the shoreline and dominated the landscape. At low tide, invading troops would have to cross 300 yards of open beach to reach the cover of a four-foot-high seawall. They targeted spring of 1944 for the assault phase, Operation Neptune, choosing a 50-mile stretch of the Normandy coastline as the landing site. British and Canadian troops would assault three beaches-Juno, Sword, and Gold-while American troops would hit two to their west, Utah and Omaha.įour-mile-long Omaha Beach, also known as Beach 46, shaped up as the toughest nut to crack. THE ALLIES HAD BEEN PLANNING the invasion of France, dubbed Operation Overlord, for more than a year. He knew that it was up to him-and the men by the seawall-to somehow make the landing work.īrigadier General Norman “Dutch” Cota called on experience, guile, and raw bravery to overcome the deadly obstacles facing assault troops at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. It was the largest, most complex invasion ever attempted and was, the planners conceded, “fraught with hazards, both in nature and magnitude.” As Cota scanned the beach, he saw that everything that could go wrong had gone wrong.
He knew that landings rarely follow the script, and this was no ordinary landing. “The crusade in Europe at this point was disarmed and naked before its enemies,” Captain Charles Cawthon of the 29th Infantry Division recalled. Army after-action report described, their weapons fouled by sand and water and their resolve shaken by the horrors they had seen. The dazed, dispirited, and exhausted soldiers who had made it across the beach huddled by the seawall beneath the bluffs, “inert, leaderless and almost incapable of action,” as a U.S. Discarded weapons, life vests, and personal effects were strewn about, and disabled tanks burned fiercely.
Dead and wounded American soldiers lay sprawled on the sand and floating in the water. From the bluffs overlooking the shore, German machine guns and rifles raked the beach, and artillery and mortar shells added to the mayhem. on June 6, 1944, he saw death, destruction, and defeat. When Brigadier General Norman “Dutch” Cota landed on Omaha Beach at 7:25 a.m.
At Omaha Beach, Norman “Dutch” Cota proved that adaptability and grit can win the day when plans go awry