Omaha Beach: A Flawed Victory

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.

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 literal

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.

... 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.

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.