If the Omaha Beach push had failed.....

[ABNAK]

….could D-Day have still been successful? Like if Omaha Beach would have had to be evacuated?

Strategically it was kind of in the center of the invasion beaches, and was the most touch-and-go, by-the-hair-on-your-ass objective. The most costly also. But all the other beachheads were successful with less problems. Could D-Day have survived without success at Omaha?

[kwelz]

If only Omaha had failed the overall assault would probably have still succeeded. If 2 beaches had failed then I think it would have been a disaster.

Germany was already on the cusp of collapse so who knows.

[OH58D]

Sure it could have, but would have taken longer. Remember you have Utah Beach, Point Du Hoc and the British beaches of Gold, Juno, etc. I was talking with my 96 year old father in law today and he was a Buck Sergeant with the 2nd battalion, 16th Infantry Regt. Ist Infantry Division, stationed in Dorchester, England for training before the invasion. He was in the 2nd wave at Easy Red, Omaha Beach. He was carrying a radio telephone and a Thompson machine gun. They were offloaded into the landing craft at 2:30am and sailed in circles until their time to storm the beach. He said they were all so seasick, they didn't care if they lived or died - they wanted off the LC.

They found the 1st Wave all bunched up, not making any progress. As he got behind a tank obstacle, his radio telephone on his back was hit by German fire and destroyed. He dumped it and made his way across the open sand to more cover and grabbed one section of a Bangalore Torpedo and went with another infantryman up to a heavily barbed wire section by one of the lanes inland. He helped assemble the Bangalore Torpedo, slid it under the wire and was shot twice in the left leg as he tried to move away from the impending explosion. He dragged himself back and laid for hours until he got medical treatment. He was sent back across the channel later that same day and spent two weeks in an English hospital before checking himself out, and finding the next transport across the channel to join his unit. He fought across France, Belgium, Germany and into Czechoslovakia before returning home in December 1945.

From 1946-1949 he went to college, did ROTC, and went back into the Army as a 2LT in 1950. Really tough gentleman, however when the movie Saving Private Ryan was released, he didn't want to see it nor re-live it all. He has never gone back to Normandy.

[HardToHandle]

The Commonwealth landings were successful further east. Abandoning the single beach wouldn’t have immediately doomed the landings. As the narrow Omaha landing was flanked by Utah and the British beaches. Moreover, the worsening weather in the days following might have made a second Dieppe evacuation difficult at best.

Omaha was important to overcoming resistance, but most important was the planned use for the Mulberries prefab port sections. In the end, the Omaha Beach Mulberry only operated for a short time before being disabled by bad weather. It still was a major logistical hub and the main fuel delivery point.

[titsonritz]

[Endur]

Sure it could have, but would have taken longer. Remember you have Utah Beach, Point Du Hoc and the British beaches of Gold, Juno, etc. I was talking with my 96 year old father in law today and he was a Buck Sergeant with the 2nd battalion, 16th Infantry Regt. Ist Infantry Division, stationed in Dorchester, England for training before the invasion. He was in the 2nd wave at Easy Red, Omaha Beach. He was carrying a radio telephone and a Thompson machine gun. They were offloaded into the landing craft at 2:30am and sailed in circles until their time to storm the beach. He said they were all so seasick, they didn't care if they lived or died - they wanted off the LC.

They found the 1st Wave all bunched up, not making any progress. As he got behind a tank obstacle, his radio telephone on his back was hit by German fire and destroyed. He dumped it and made his way across the open sand to more cover and grabbed one section of a Bangalore Torpedo and went with another infantryman up to a heavily barbed wire section by one of the lanes inland. He helped assemble the Bangalore Torpedo, slid it under the wire and was shot twice in the left leg as he tried to move away from the impending explosion. He dragged himself back and laid for hours until he got medical treatment. He was sent back across the channel later that same day and spent two weeks in an English hospital before checking himself out, and finding the next transport across the channel to join his unit. He fought across France, Belgium, Germany and into Czechoslovakia before returning home in December 1945.

From 1946-1949 he went to college, did ROTC, and went back into the Army as a 2LT in 1950. Really tough gentleman, however when the movie Saving Private Ryan was released, he didn't want to see it nor re-live it all. He has never gone back to Normandy.

Tell him men like him are the reason why I and many of the men I served with joined. We could only have hoped to fill a fraction of their boots.

[SteyrAUG]

Even if we never successfully opened up a western front, eventually Berlin was going to get nuked.

We designed the bomb for Germany, not Japan.

V2 rockets, Me262s, Stg45 rifles and all the other tech advances of the Germans would ultimately have been meaningless because eventually Berlin was going to get nuked. The only other thing that "may" have changed is the Russian's might have blitzed all the way to the Atlantic wall if we failed to establish a foothold.

And come the end of the war, they may or may not have retreated to previously agreed areas of occupation. Probably under threat of "the bomb" but the cold war would have arrived a lot sooner.

[ABNAK]

Tell him men like him are the reason why I and many of the men I served with joined. We could only have hoped to fill a fraction of their boots.

That is an understatement. Kudos to his FIL and all his buddies.

[dwhitehorne]

Sure it could have, but would have taken longer. Remember you have Utah Beach, Point Du Hoc and the British beaches of Gold, Juno, etc. I was talking with my 96 year old father in law today and he was a Buck Sergeant with the 2nd battalion, 16th Infantry Regt. Ist Infantry Division, stationed in Dorchester, England for training before the invasion. He was in the 2nd wave at Easy Red, Omaha Beach. He was carrying a radio telephone and a Thompson machine gun. They were offloaded into the landing craft at 2:30am and sailed in circles until their time to storm the beach. He said they were all so seasick, they didn't care if they lived or died - they wanted off the LC.

They found the 1st Wave all bunched up, not making any progress. As he got behind a tank obstacle, his radio telephone on his back was hit by German fire and destroyed. He dumped it and made his way across the open sand to more cover and grabbed one section of a Bangalore Torpedo and went with another infantryman up to a heavily barbed wire section by one of the lanes inland. He helped assemble the Bangalore Torpedo, slid it under the wire and was shot twice in the left leg as he tried to move away from the impending explosion. He dragged himself back and laid for hours until he got medical treatment. He was sent back across the channel later that same day and spent two weeks in an English hospital before checking himself out, and finding the next transport across the channel to join his unit. He fought across France, Belgium, Germany and into Czechoslovakia before returning home in December 1945.

From 1946-1949 he went to college, did ROTC, and went back into the Army as a 2LT in 1950. Really tough gentleman, however when the movie Saving Private Ryan was released, he didn't want to see it nor re-live it all. He has never gone back to Normandy.

I can't even image what these men went thought. This statement is as genuine as it gets: He said they were all so seasick, they didn't care if they lived or died - they wanted off the LC. clearly from someone who has been there and done that. David

[Grand58742]

Didn't want to start a new thread, but this is awesome.

https://time.com/5601223/d-day-veter...utes-normandy/

For the second time in his life, Tom Rice, a 97-year-old from San Diego, has parachuted into Normandy. Wednesday’s feat, however, was a lot more joyous than his first jump three-quarters of a century earlier.

Rice’s leap was part of the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the allied invasion of the French region of Normandy that began on June 6, 1944, and marked a turning point in World War II. Among the commemorative events was a parachute jump, which included Rice and about 200 other parachutists.

“It went perfect, perfect jump,” he said, according to the Associated Press.

Rice jumped in tandem from a C-47 transporter Wednesday and landed in the same area as his first jump — outside the Normandy town of Carentan, the site of a key WWII battle.