D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (42 page)

sound of detonation and then the burst of fire and smoke that shot high into the air.
Svenner
broke amidship and sank."
²⁴
Capt. Kenneth Wright, a commando, wrote his parents five days later: "It was rather appalling. The ship just cracked in half, and the two ends folded together as if it were a pocketknife closing."
²⁵

Svenner
was the only Allied ship sunk by the German navy that day. Even as the E-boats fired their torpedoes, HMS
Warspite
attacked them. The battleship sank one and the remainder did a quick about-face and returned to the relative safety of Le Havre. Thus ended the sole serious attempt by the
Kriegsmarine
to interfere with the landings.

Off Utah Beach, planes laying a smoke screen between the Germans and the bombardment fleet appeared at 0610 to do their job, but the plane which should have hidden USS
Corry,
a destroyer, was shot down by flak. For a few moments, therefore,
Corry
was the only Allied ship the German gunners could see. They concentrated a heavy fire on her.
Corry
began to maneuver rapidly, firing all the while. She was taking a great risk, as only a relatively small area had been swept of mines.

Machinist Mate Grant Gullickson was down in the forward engine room. The pipes were dripping wet, the turbines hissing steam. "Our job was to give the skipper [Lieutenant Commander Hoffman] whatever he asked for, full speed ahead, emergency astern. Overhead the guns roared.

"All of a sudden, the ship literally jumped out of the water! As the floor grates came loose, the lights went out and steam filled the space."
Corry
had struck a mine amidships.

"It was total darkness with steam severely hot and choking," Gullickson said. He was in what must be one of the most terrifying situations known to man, caught in the engine room with bursting turbines, boilers, and pipes in a sinking ship. The water was rising; within minutes it was up to his waist.

"At this time, there was another rumble from underneath the ship."
Corry
had struck another mine and was all but cut in two. Hoffman headed out for sea by hand-steering his ship, but within minutes
Corry
lost all power and began to settle. At 0641 Hoffman ordered abandon ship.

Down in the forward engine room, "we grappled to open the hatch, which we did and began to evacuate," Gullickson recounted. "By the time we got up on deck, the main deck was awash and ruptured clean across. It was obvious the
Corry
was dead.

"I noticed at this time that my life belt and shirt were missing. They had been ripped from my body by the explosion. I abandoned ship on the starboard side about midship. We didn't jump off, we literally floated off because the ship was underwater." Two hours later, he and others were picked up by USS
Fitch,
given coffee laced with the ship's torpedo alcohol, and eventually transferred to a transport and taken back to a hospital in England.

"On this ship was Chief Ravinsky, the chief of the forward fire room. He had steam burns over 99 percent of his body. We tended to him and he could talk a little but the burns were too much; he passed away the next day."

Seaman Joseph Dolan was stationed in the combat information center (CIC) of the
Bayfield.
"I still remember the urgent message that I copied from the
Corry.
It said
Corry
was hit and was sinking, and they had many casualties and needed help quickly. Most messages were coded, but this one was in the clear because of the urgency of the situation."

Seaman A. R. Beyer of the
Fitch
was launched in a whale-boat to pick up survivors. He remembered that
Corry's
stern stayed up to the last. He saw a man clinging to the top blade of the
Corry's
propeller, but there were a great number of survivors clinging to debris or rafts and he picked them up first. By the time he turned back to
Corry,
the man on the propeller was gone.
Fitch
took 223 survivors on board in the course of the morning.

Ens. Doug Birch was on a subchaser off Utah Beach. When the
Corry
hit the mine, "many people were blown into the water and I had the experience of finding a sailor who had B-positive blood and helping him on a direct transfusion on our deck, after he was hauled aboard. When the pharmacist mate said, 'He's dead,' I wasn't sure if it was him or me."
²⁹

The mines were playing hell with the Allied vessels off Utah. PC 1261 struck a mine at 0542 and sank in four minutes. At 0547, LCT 597, directly astern of PC 1176, struck a mine. Lt. Vander Beek in LCC 60 saw her lifted out of the water by the powerful force of the mine. "We were but a few yards away and felt the explosion's potent shock waves course through our craft." LCT 597 went down instantly, taking the cargo of four DD tanks with her.

At about the same time, Vander Beek learned that his sister craft, LCC 80, had fouled her screw on a dan buoy and was out of commission. That left only Vander Beek's LCC 60 as a guide for the LCTs and first wave of LCVPs at Omaha. It was an impossible

task for one boat to do the work of three, made even worse by the offshore wind and strong tidal current. As Vander Beek guided the LCTs and LCVPs in to shore, he drifted to his left, so that when he signaled them to go on in, they were 500 to 1,000 meters southeast of their intended landing site. This proved to be fortuitous.
³⁰
By 0600, the remaining LCTs had launched their DD tanks. As the tanks swam ashore they were hampered by the head wind and tidal current. The Higgins boats comprising the first and second waves passed through them, headed for shore.

As the landing craft moved in, the battleships and cruisers continued to fire. As they belted away they raised a continuous wall of sound, so immense it could be felt as well as heard. German batteries and the drumming of the engines of the bombers overhead added to it.

Nevada
was anchored off Utah.
Texas
and
Arkansas
were off Omaha. They were at anchor because the swept area was too narrow to allow maneuvering, meaning the Navy regarded the mines as more dangerous than the German batteries. The transports were behind them, the destroyers and landing craft in front, headed toward shore in columns of Higgins boats, DUKWs, LCIs, and LCTs. Supporting the battleships were the cruisers.

For
Nevada,
the initial targets for her 14-inch guns were German batteries. Her smaller guns were drenching the beach with shells. At 0620
Nevada
turned her 14-inchers onto the beach as well; General Collins had requested this action, saying he had great confidence in the accuracy of the big guns and wanted them to knock gaps in the concrete seawall. The guns were firing point-blank, almost on the horizontal; as the great shells passed over, men on the Higgins boats swore that the vacuums created by the passing shells caused the boats to actually lift out of the water.

At Omaha,
Texas
blasted away at the battery on Pointe-du-Hoc, where the rangers were shortly scheduled to land. By 0550 it was light enough for spotter planes to direct the fire. The huge naval shells dug numerous craters in Pointe-du-Hoc, tumbled great chunks of cliff into the sea, and apparently destroyed the casemates holding the guns.

Wing Comdr. L. C. Glover was an RAF spotter for HMS
Warspite,
which was pounding away at the Villerville battery to the east of Sword Beach. He was flying midway between the ship and the shore. "I called out the order 'fire' and turned slowly broadside on to the shore to wait for the fall of shot. Suddenly, in the

clear sky my aircraft experienced a most violent bump which practically shook me out of my wits. At the same moment, I saw two enormous objects moving rapidly away from me toward the shore and immediately realized that I had flown at right angles through the slipstream of
Warspite's
two ranging 15-inch 'bricks.' Awestruck, I followed the shells down quite easily with my eyes during the rest of their curved flight and saw one of them actually hit the gun emplacement we were engaging!" Less happily, Glover reported that at least two Allied planes were hit and destroyed by shells that day.
³¹

At 0615,
Texas
turned her 14-inch guns on the exit road at the western end of Omaha. That road led up a ravine to the village of Vierville. As Admiral Morison put it, "The volume and accuracy of naval fire would largely determine how tough a time the 1st Battalion 116th Regiment [29th Division] would have to secure this exit after H-Hour."
³²

The Germans were firing back from their batteries at Port-en-Bessin. Nick Carbone, a sailor from Brooklyn on
Texas,
watched a great German shell skip in the water just between
Texas
and a British cruiser. Imitating a famous American voice, Carbone said, "I hate war. Eleanor hates war."
³³

On the western end of Omaha,
Arkansas
turned her guns on a battery at Les Moulins, while the cruisers and destroyers pounded away at German casemates and pillboxes situated along the bluff (where the cemetery stands today). Off the British and Canadian beaches, a bombardment just as intense was hurled at the enemy.

In short, a tremendous tonnage of shells hit the beaches and batteries. The results, for the most part, were terribly disappointing. As anyone who has visited the Normandy beaches will attest, this was not because of inaccurate fire, but rather the result of German skill in fortification building. Seaman Ian Michie, on HMS
Orion,
a cruiser, was right when he said, "Our shooting was very good and direct hits were soon being recorded. We scored thirteen direct hits on the battery before shifting target."
³⁴
But at Longues-sur-Mer, Pointe-du-Hoc, Port-en-Bessin, St.-Marcouf, Azeville, and the other batteries, the casemates stand today, battered but unbroken. They took many direct hits, dozens in some cases, but even the 14-inch shells failed to penetrate. The shells made pock marks, they knocked away some concrete, they exposed the steel reinforcing rods, but they did not penetrate.

Many of the German gunners inside were rendered deaf or

knocked out by concussions. An official report from the Royal Navy admitted that "no serious damage either to the concrete structures or the guns in the strong points" was achieved, but pointed out that the shelling "effectively neutralized the positions by terrifying the enemy personnel in them and by preventing them from manning their weapons and firing on the troops during the landings."
³⁵

That was wishful thinking. Between the lifting of the naval bombardment and the landing of the first waves, many Germans managed to man their guns and commence firing. Inaccurately, it should be added: they had no spotter planes, and the forward observation posts on the edge of the cliffs were blinded by the smoke, so although they dueled with the battleships and cruisers, sitting at anchor, they scored no hits.

The smaller batteries, pillboxes, and Tobruks, the ones right on the beach or in the bluff above Omaha, also took a pounding and survived. Those on the beach had embrasures opening to the sides, not out to sea, so as to deliver enfilading fire parallel to the shoreline while being fully protected from fire from the warships. As the first wave hit, they came to life, delivering a withering fire at the tanks and infantry.

From the point of view of the soldiers going ashore, the great naval bombardment was as ineffective as the great air bombardment. According to Admiral Morison, the reason was "not enough time was allowed," and the fault was the Army's, not the Navy's, because the Army did not wish the bombardment to start before daylight. In Morison's opinion, H-Hour should have been postponed to 0730 "to give naval gunfire more time to play on beach defenses."
³⁶

As the warships lifted their fire and took on targets inland, LCT(R)s went into action. Lt. Eugene Bernstein was in command of the lead LCT(R) at Omaha, with thirteen other craft following him. At 3,500 meters the LCT(R)s spread out into a line abreast with 100 meters between the craft. Bernstein recalled being amazed that he was right on target and right on time.
³⁷

Medic W. N. Solkin was in LCT(R) 450. He remembered that each member of the crew was armed "with a fire extinguisher. Our skipper was in the conning tower with his finger on a button. We held our breath, hanging onto anything that was stationary. We fired our rockets and hell broke loose.

"The ship seemed to explode. We listed sharply and I remember being buried under arms and legs. Now the fire extinguishers came into play. Small fires broke out and smoke rose up

through the bulkheads. The heat and noise were terrific. Everyone was cursing and screaming and fighting the flames that threatened to envelop the entire craft.

"I can't describe the sound of a thousand rockets being released in less than a minute. I remember a shipmate describing it as the rush of a hurricane. The craft shuddered, was thrust backward, and momentarily lost steerage."
³⁸

The rockets—14,000 of them—whooshed over the Higgins boats in the first wave, arching their way to the beach. As Joseph Balkoski, historian of the 29th Division, put it, "Their roar was like the final crescendo of a great symphony."

To the men on the Higgins boats, it seemed that no man could possibly live through such a bombardment. Unfortunately, many of the rockets fell harmlessly into the surf. A few hit at the lower edge of the bluff and in the level areas between the bluff and the beach. The rockets set off grass fires, which provided some smoke, and caused land mines to explode—but they killed few if any German defenders.