Normandy- Omaha Beach question

What chanel you watching?

What the frick do you want them to do? Vroom vroom up onto shore and start running over Nazi's?

Most of them were troop transports. The others were providing sea-to-land bombardments. Many others were supply ships waiting to land once the beachheads were secure.

If I understand your question, my answer would be the technology at the time didnt provide for very accurate strikes on land from ships. Therefore, they would be bombing allies and nazis

to be more specific, when they first landed onshore the ships just sat there and didn't fire, but later once we did land and work on getting up the hill to the natzis, then they started firing on the germans

why didn't they do that to start with?

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Watching tv on it and one thing I don't understand is why did the navy ships just sit back and let the Germans pick our guys off one by one as they stormed the beach?

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Multiple reasons. First of all, naval shelling (like most kinds of bombardments) in WW2 were not accurate enough to do it around your own troops. As terrible as it sounds, they had superiority in the theater with boots on the ground, and the causalities were acceptable for taking those pillboxes. Nothing stops an invasion quite like shelling your own troops rushing a stationary position. It was also a very cloudy morning and previous night before, which led to a lot of missed targets from the Ariel and naval bombardments. It's also a reason a lot of sticks of paratroopers ended up all over the place.

They were also limited on how much they could bomb the beach before the actual invasion. They didn't want to point out to the enemy, Hey guys, we're bombing here... might want to check this out!

It's crazy how accurate we have become with cannons.

Which ships sat there?

The landing craft weren't armed really.

The battleships and other combat ships had to protect the troop ships and also they couldn't start blindly firing while their guys were on the beach.

The RAF and USAAF had been bombing the German lines for months before D-Day and the Navy was doing a good job of supporting. The plan was to have the paratroopers go behind the lines and divert attention away from the beaches so that the army could land their men.

Because of the wild clusterfrick of an airborne landing whilst being fired on, a lot of the paratroopers missed their mark and didn't get behind the beach defenses. Omaha beach had a full German defensive front while other beaches like Utah did not.

The destroyers were too far out to accurately target the germans. They had been ordered to stay far offshore for fear of running aground. Once they realized the landing was hopelessly stalled they ignored orders and got in as close as possible. Once they started firing on the German positions the troops started to advance.

Omar Bradley personally credited the Navy for the landing's success.

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why didn't they do that to start with?

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They did and most of the artillery came up short killing some fish. They also didn't want to make a bunch of holes in the beach because the amphibious tanks would get stuck. Most of the tanks sunk due to the waves.

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05.30 Shortly after sunrise, Allied naval forces begin bombardment of the beaches; seven battleships, 23 cruisers and 103 destroyers pound the shoreline. HMS Belfast is among those bombarding Juno beach. USS Tuscaloosa bombards the 30 batteries around Utah beach.


06.10 B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators bomb batteries over Omaha Beach but cloud cover means they mostly miss their targets.

06.15 As H-Hour nears, rocket launcher barges approach the beaches, spraying them with salvoes of rockets: 20,000 in the British sector (Gold, Juno and Sword beaches) and 18,000 in the American sector (Utah and Omaha beaches)

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