09-07-2023, 03:42 PM
(09-07-2023, 03:34 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: I'm going to look up if this is discussed anywhere online after I post this, but could the D-Day invasions have been done differently that might have saved ten of thousands of lives?
I'm thinking of the landing vessels on the beach: they opened the front, making them easy targets for machine gun spray fire.
If they had opened from the back, wouldn't the soldiers have had the protection of the landing vessels and not be shot as they immediately opened from the front?
I realize that they could have still been shot when they ran out from around the back, but they wouldn't have been as cluttered together, and it's also more difficult to hit a moving target. I realize the machine guns didn't aim at soldiers individually, but it's still more difficult than hitting a stationary group.
Or would that have taken too much time? I can see the argument for taking too much time for the vessels that didn't make it to the beach and the soldiers were waste-deep in water, but I feel like a lot of soldiers could have been saved if they didn't open from the front, making them easy targets.
Is it not as simple as I'm thinking?
It's a question of water depth and ease of exit, your next to last paragraph nails it. The objective was to unload the troops as quickly as possible onto the beach. If it opened from the back or the side, they would dropping into significantly deeper water, making their trek to the beach much slower. They were loaded up with full equipment, and would now be soaking wet, trying to rush to the beach and avoid fire while doing so. They would have been gunned down in the water instead, or they would have perhaps drowned if they fell. I do think they knew that the strategy would result in many deaths, but they wanted to overwhelm the beach with soldiers and a front door was the best option to do so.
