re: Normandy- Omaha Beach question

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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.

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Wrong. Naval gunfire was highly accurate back then. Otherwise, how could they hit targets (ex., ships) from more than a mile away? The problems were that the Germans were not out in he open Therefore making them easy targets. During the shelling, they were in fortified bunkers/pillboxes that could withstand the shelling. Also, a lot of troops were in the trenches, so unless it was a direct hit Inside of the trench line, no damage was done. Same thing as in the Pacific theater - Tarwa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, etc. We bombed/shelled the hell out of the Japs but they were so dug in that in reality it had little to no effect.