D-Day_ The Battle for Normandy - Antony Beevor [48]
Gerow’s original plan was to assault Omaha with two divisions, the 1st Division on the left and the 29th Division on the right, under his command. Bradley, however, had much greater confidence in the 1st Division, the ‘Big Red One’, and in its outstanding commander, General Clarence R. Huebner. Their experience and combat effectiveness from opposed landings in the Mediterranean were unequalled. So Bradley made Huebner the commander and simply attached the 116th Regimental Combat Team from the 29th Division.
Bradley felt that ‘Gee’ Gerow, who had not yet commanded a large formation in battle, had been given command of the corps only because of his friendship with Eisenhower. Gerow, however, feared that the bombing and naval bombardment might not work, and he remained unconvinced even after Eisenhower assured him that ‘the greatest firepower ever assembled on the face of the earth’ would be supporting him. Events were to prove Gerow right. He shared his concerns before the invasion with the military analyst Basil Liddell Hart ‘about whether the importance of the unexpected was sufficiently considered in our planning’.
The first landing craft carrying the 116th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Division and the 16th Infantry of the 1st Division had set off from their mother ships at 05.20 hours. They had over an hour’s journey in heavy seas to land on the beach at H-Hour. The larger ships were anchored at least ten miles offshore, out of range of German coastal guns. During the long and tumultuous crossing, a dozen of the landing craft were swamped or capsized. Fifteen minutes later, two companies of the 741st Tank Battalion, which were to support the 1st Infantry Division, launched their DD Shermans 5,000 yards out from the shore.
Captain Scott-Bowden, as Bradley had promised in January, was back in an assault pilotage role with Sergeant Ogden-Smith. Scott-Bowden’s pilot boat had a crew of three, a US Navy lieutenant, a coxswain and a Mexican-American sailor manning a quadruple pom-pom gun. The lieutenant on Scott-Bowden’s craft suddenly drew his attention to the fact that the LCTs had stopped at 5,000 yards out to launch their tanks. Scott-Bowden was horrified. ‘It’s far too rough,’ he said. ‘They should go right in.’ He later described the decision to launch the 741st Tank Battalion’s Shermans at that distance as ‘absolutely insane’.
Twenty-seven of their tanks out of thirty-two foundered and sank. Only two reached the beach through the water. Three more could not be launched because the ramp jammed, so the landing craft took them all the way in to the beach. Altogether thirty-three tank crewmen drowned. The rest were rescued later. Those of the 743rd Tank Battalion who reached the shore owed their survival to the fact that both army and navy officers decided to take the rest of them all the way in. Major General Percy Hobart, the mastermind behind the amphibious tank, told Liddell Hart ten days later that ‘the Americans bungled their use’. But whether the DD tank was the right answer to the problem of infantry support on the restricted space of Omaha remains a matter for debate.
When still some way offshore, Scott-Bowden and the crew became aware of the 329 heavy American bombers coming in from behind them. To their dismay they saw that the bombs were falling well beyond the top of the ridge. None hit the beach or the German positions guarding the beach exits. ‘That’s a fat lot of use,’ Scott-Bowden said angrily to the lieutenant. ‘All it’s done is wake them up.’ In the thirty minutes preceding H-Hour, the Liberators and Fortresses of the Eighth Air Force dropped 13,000 bombs, but none fell on Omaha beach.
The US Army Air Corps had made wildly optimistic claims about their ‘precision bombing’. Unfortunately Montgomery, who grabbed at any opportunity which might save the lives of his ground troops, accepted the idea without question and abandoned the British doctrine of night landings. Both he and Bradley