Sunday 8 April 2012

D-Day - UTAH Beach


At 03:00 the troops began unloading from their transport ships into their landing craft for the 3 1/2 hour trip to the beaches. The naval gun fire support commenced at 05:00. The ships engaged on the beach defences would switch fire inland once the first troops began to land.

As the troops from the 8th Infantry Regiment landed at 06:30, they met little opposition other than a few rounds of artillery.  However they had in fact landed at the wrong place, being over a mile to the south. Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jnr quickly took control, and devised an impromptu plan, and ordered that subsequent waves would land at the new location. The assaulting battalions in the meantime pushed on from the beaches to secure their objectives and link up with the airborne troops.
With the beaches secured, the remaining waves landed according to plan, and the link up with airborne units was achieved. The lack of enemy responses and the initiative in flexing the plan to the situation meant casualties were light, only 210 killed, missing, or wounded out of over 20,000 troops which were to land on D-Day.