D-Day - The Untold Story

Page 3 of 6

• 1. Operation Overlord
• 2. Surveying Omaha Beach
• 3. Witnessing the horror
• 4. Historical discrepancies
• 5. The element of surprise
• 6. Find out more
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Witnessing the horror

The second group of tanks (743rd Armored Battalion), and the crew of the LCTs from which they would be launched, witnessed this horror and chose to steer themselves close to shore and land directly on the beach. If both waves of tanks been launched at the designated time and position, the strong current running to the east would have caused the vehicles to come ashore with little room for manoeuvre, and forced to traverse this narrow margin under heavy fire - either to the west to support American Troops, or east to Gold Beach to support the British. In either case they would most likely have been destroyed.

The Utah landing force, by contrast, came ashore about a mile south of the intended area, and faced little opposition on the beach, and out of range of the major emplacements of German artillery. Fortunately the decision was also made to launch the Utah Beach DD tanks closer to shore than originally planned, and they were successful at supporting the infantry on the beach. In all, between June 6th and 16th the Americans landed more than 300,000 men and more than 35,000 vehicles at Utah and Omaha Beach.

'... hundreds of thousands of troops came ashore to liberate Europe from Nazi rule.'

Careful review of the sonar data in late 2000 and early 2001 helped in locating more of the missing DD-Tanks of the 741st Armored Battalion. In all, 23 sonar images represent individual DD-Tanks on the seafloor; some upright, some on their sides, and several with turrets detached and lying close by, between 1 and 4 kilometres from the shore.

In the summer of 2001 a team from INA returned to continue survey work off Omaha Beach, focusing on the DD-Tanks. Also, given the scope of the invasion and the innumerable stories of bravery on D-Day, the story of the loss of the 741st Armored Battalion was chosen as a focus for ongoing research, as it could be correlated with records in the national archives.

In 2001 and 2002 the INA team collected nearly 30 hours of seafloor video via Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) - and with commercial divers, focusing on the DD Tanks lost off Omaha Beach. The team was able to identify and film 13 of the 27 DD Tanks that were lost on D-Day, two having made it to the beach and three never having launched. They also discovered that 3 of the 27 tanks had been recovered - two being on display in the Musee des Epaves in Port en Bessin. Additionally, ten survivors from the 741st Battalion that went down with the DD Tanks have been interviewed, providing considerable insight into the conditions of the loss of their unit on that historic day.

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Published: 2002-06-01