Customer Reviews

Omaha Beach: A Flawed Victory

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book asks why Omaha Beach was so close to a defeat, and provides the first new answer in 40 years, and the best answer ever. Lewis's analysis will, I think, become part of the "conventional knowledge" of 21st century history, and has throughly refuted many earlier attempts to explain why we nearly lost.

In one sentence, the D-day plan was a poor compromise between British and American seaborn invasion methods, cooperation between army and navy was less than outstanding, and there was over reliance on airpower to soften the beaches, a job for which it was untrained, untested, and unenthusiastic. At Omaha, the bombs missed the targets entirely.

The book also has many lessons for a manager in a large organizations, if one is willing to think about the larger implications of planning in large organizations.

One reviewer stated that the book seemed poorly researched. I couldn't agree less. Lewis has thoroughly researched the "paper trail" leading to D-Day--much more so, I suspect, than anyone before him.

Omaha Beach is a book that anyone interested in D-Day should read. Unfortunately, since it focuses on military doctrine and planning, rather than the actual battle, few people will actually read it. Lewis, in this extensively researched book, analyzes the planning of the Normandy assault, specifically looking to discover why the landings at Omaha Beach were nearly a failure. To do this, Lewis discusses the abilities and defects of the various generals involved in the overall planning (Eisenhower, Montgomery, Bradley). He also analyzes the different beach assault doctrines of the Americans and the British, and how those doctrines factored into the decisions the three leaders made. Lewis clearly shows that by the time these three had thoroughly screwed up, generals Gerow and Huebner (commanders of the II Corps and 1st Infantry Division, respectively) had very limited ability to make changes. They were, in fact, handed a flawed plan and commanded to carry out essentially a suicide mission.

Lewis shows that beach assault doctrine for the British and Americans differed substantially. The British, who controlled operational planning in the Mediterranean and Western European theaters, preferred landings that maximized surprise. Thus, they conducted landings in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy at night with minimal shore bombardment. The Americans, on the other hand, preferred a direct daylight assault that maximized their firepower advantage (learned the hard way at Tarawa). Thus, by 1944 and 1945, landings in the Pacific used shore bombardments that lasted not minutes or hours, but days. Both doctrines produced successful landings. So what happened at Omaha Beach?

Lewis argues that the near-failure occurred because new doctrine based on improper expectations was invented by Montgomery and allowed to be put in place by Eisenhower. Bradley compounded the problem by refusing to listen to the objections of Gerow and Huebner. This new doctrine was a bad blending of American and British doctrines. As a result, the planning produced a daylight assault intended to achieve tactical surprise. Essentially, two incompatible features of American and British doctrines were melded. This was particularly a result, Lewis argues, of Montgomery's over-reliance on airpower. It was assumed that a long naval bombardment was not necessary since heavy bombers would blast beach defenses and obstacles away in one quick bomb run. This would preserve surprise, but of course would require daylight landings.

Since airpower in World War II was hardly accurate, it is no surprise that the bombers did not hit a single thing on the beach. Coupled with bad intelligence and other serious planning disasters, the landings at Omaha Beach nearly failed. The reader is left wondering how such incompetence at high levels was allowed, but is also left wondering in amazement at the achievement of the men who landed on that beach. Lewis shows that they stormed ashore after literally 99% of the landing plan had completely failed, yet they were still able to make it.

This is a good book, one that demonstrates very well the difficulties of planning and coalition warfare. It also takes a lot of the shine off of the records of the top commanders in Europe. Many of the honors in the records of Eisenhower, Montgomery, and Bradley are certainly well-deserved, but this book shows that some weren't, and that the successes of D-Day were due far more to tactical leadership (division HQ and down) and the sheer willpower of the ordinary soldiers. It certainly seems that the "top brass" set them up to fail.

Lewis strongly critizes Omar Bardley's conduct during the planning for Operation Overload. Bradley did not allow enough commandos or air strikes to destroy the German beach obstacles on Normandy Beach. Bradley also ignored General Pete Cortlett's advice that the pre-invasion bombardment should be longer than planned. The invasion was planned in the early morning which made the invasion force easy targets for the German defenders. Bradley refused to plan the landing to place at night because he thought that airpower would neutralize the German defenders. But the aircraft used to disable the German defenses were heavy bombers which were inaccurate rather than smaller tactical aircraft more suited for the task. To make matters worse Bradley placed newly trained soldiers in the first wave while the veterans were in reserve. I would highly reccomend this book to anyone interested in the often overlooked flaws of commanders such as Omar Bradley.

Stephen Ambrose looked at Omaha Beach and said it was glorious. Adrian Lewis looked at it and asked, "Why did the plan fail?" He shows very clearly that the plan did fail, and that it failed because Montgomery had some faulty views that Eisenhower and Bradley allowed to be incorporated into the invasion plans. Add an intelligence failure, rough seas, and an air bombardment that missed the Germans by miles and you have "Bloody Omaha," the only one of the five D-Day landings that came close to disaster. Lewis is much less clear in explaining why Monty's faulty views were not corrected, why the intelligence was mistaken, and particularly why the heavy bombers -- Monty's answer to the Atlantic Wall -- were programmed to miss. Tighter, clearer organization and more thorough answers to his excellent questions would greatly improve this valuable book.

... Ambrose makes the point it was the determination of junior officers and NCO's to overcome the obstacles that ultimately prevailed in our success. Lewis digs into what caused those obstacles.
Bradley, whose star is fading as history looks more intently at his record, obviously let staff planning overcome common sense. Attacking through the heavily defended draws rather than assaulting up the steep hills between them proved to be impossible. Montgomery's reputation has appeared to sink further each year since the war ended. Some historians believe his competence was actually about equal to a third rate American army corps commandere. Lewis points out the refusal to capitalize on Marine and Navel experience in the Pacific which was new to me.
If it had not been for the bravery of the destroyers coming close to shore to neutralize with their five inch guns some of the pill boxes, the situation would have been much worse. Reliance on air power accuracy of that time to destroy German resistance at the beaches was a naive idea. Lewis describes the collapse of the plan for engineers cutting paths through the obstacles for the landing craft. They could only do this work while protected by infantry. Yet, it was not possible to have this shield. They managed to get the job done anyway.
While I was hesitent to buy this book at first, I think it makes an immense addition to the D day library of anyone interested in understanding the battle.

Omaha Beach details the doctrine based system of warfare or basically politics of war. It reads well and has lots of information about the different ideas and plans for the invasion that the commanders wanted to use but was scrapped as soon as the ramps opened. People expecting a forward account on the battle itself will be disappointed since only the first chapter actually talks about it. But if you want to know everything there is to know about the stratagies of warfare then this book is it.

Mr Lewis's extensive research is narrowly, and wisely, focused specifically on the planning for the Omaha Beach landing. His thesis is, there were two diametrically opposed amphibious operations philosophies. The first, espoused by British commanders, was a night attack with minimal gunfire support, thus maximizing surprise. The British with minimal resources, needed to exploit surprise. The US ideal was, maximum gunfire and air support with a large landing force to ensure a beachhead; American forces having more resources at their disposal. Finally, a excessive faith in what aerial attack could achieve almost spelled disaster on Omaha.
The Overlord landings in general, were a compromise of both these methods. A landing at first light, and with minimal naval gunfire support-to maximize surprise; but with mass and an aerial bombardment to overwhelm the defenses. As history demonstrated, this was almost a recipe for disaster. The "Soldier's General" (a newspaper attribution, he was never considered that by this troops) Bradley comes off badly here. Overall, a detailed study of how coalition planning can fail and a useful tonic to the "Greatest Generation" media. Highly Recommended.

Patton's assessment of Omar Bradley is starting to look more and more accurate. Bradley and his cohorts badly underestimated several aspects of needed resources for the invasion of Omaha Beach. Failure to look to the Pacific campaign for the "been there and done that" on-the-job experience learned by the Navy and Marines, resulted in higher casualties than necessary. Throw in poor communication between the Army, Navy, and the Army Air Corps, and you have the makings of a near disaster. Lewis should be commended for his homework and thoughtful analysis, however this book reads like a long memorandum from one military officer to another.

I enjoyed this book and the viewpoint presented. I did notice the Author's frequent references to Navy/Marine Corps experience in amphibious operations. However, by June 1944, the British and American Armies in the European Theaters had more hands on experience with Corps and Army sized landings than did the Navy/Marine Corps team in the Pacific.

Prior to 6 June 1944, the largest landing operations conducted by the Navy/Marine Corps team in the Central Pacific had been Division sized or smaller landings, and not all of them had been unqualified successes. The landing on Saipan, on 15 June 1944, was the first Corps sized amphibious operation the Navy/Marine Corps team conducted in the Pacific. It was characterized by a number of mistakes, landing units on wrong beaches, overestimating the capabilities of some equipment, specifically amphibious tractors, and underestimating the Japanese capability to resist. The Saipan landings did not achieve what the planners expected them to achieve. By June 17, D+2, the two Marine Divisions had been stopped well short of their D+2 objectives and had taken 10% casualties. Further, the Navy/Marine Corps leadership had no clear plan for landing reinforcements on Saipan in the event that their plan did miscarry.

The victory on Omaha Beach may have been flawed, but the Navy/Marine Corps team from the Central Pacific did not have the experience to eliminate the flaws.

As one who has done research on Omaha beach landings with respect to casualties,
which demonstrated how severely Saving Private Ryan had distorted history, I
was happy to read Lewis' book with respect to the planning involved. The
inescapable conclusion is that the higher echelons of Allied command were
close to incompetent. This doesn't contradict much of what has been written
by various other WWII historians. If WWI commanders were dunderheads (which they
were), then WWII didn't show very much improvement, except that the commanders
were concerned about casualties in ways that their WWI counterparts never were.
The principle protagonists in the Omaha Beach debacle were Ike, Monty, Brad, Gerow,
Huebner and Hall and a few others. Gerow comes across as the only one who possessed
any sense of reality and worked to correct the many flaws in the battle plan. Monty
comes across, as usual, as a mediocre thinker and one concerned first and foremost
with his image. Brad comes across as a meek and spineless wimp who clearly had no business
directing an army. The reputation he gained when a correspondent dubbed him "a soldier's
general" is approximately 180 degrees wrong. Concern for his soldiers came about last
in his thinking, way below his self esteem. Despite the almost toal reliance of the
Montgomery plan on air power, no one ever seems to have asked the simple question "Can
those flyboys actually hit the German defender position on the beaches with their bombs?"
And let's see them demonstare that they can and (most importantly) under what weather
conditions they can do so. The Army Air Force also comes across as totally unrealistic
in their claims (they lied, over and over) and their heavy bomber guys too cowardly to
fly under the clouds on D Day (except for the medium bombers guys - they were the only
aircraft to actually hit German positions). The fact that Bradley didn't have to
pull his trooops off of Omaha (which he was ready to do, and which would have doomed
those on Utah, and probablt the entire Overlord operation) was due to sheer luck - the
colossal blunder of the German commander who thought the Americans had been thrown back
into the sea and therefore declined the offer of an entire division to assist his command.
If he had accepted that offer, there is no conceivable way that the Omaha Beach assault
would have succceeded. What we had onshore late in the day was thin and without supplies,
especially ammo. For all their blunders, Monty, Ike and Brad would have failed and been
quickly replaced by Alexander, Marshall and Patton. They really didn't deserve the
success they achieved. History has been written of the event with way too much rah, rah
and far too little serious study of the details and failures of the planning. It was one
of the most poorly planned operations of WWII, or any war. Amateurism is the word that
comes to mind when reading Lewis' excellent study. Gerow (especially) and Huebner and
Hall and a few others come across as those who should have been in command.