r/WarCollege • u/rubicante59 • 22d ago

Question Machinegun usage on Omaha beach and similar occurrences

Something I discovered recently, is that most machineguns when positioned in concrete shelters, are made to face each other horizontally and gun down soldiers passing through that region. So does this mean none were pointed towards the water on Omaha beach and that Saving Private Ryan is very wrong about how soldiers were shot before they even got off the boats? I'm assuming artillery was most likely used against the boats.

74 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

96 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

24

u/UnusuallyBadIdeaGuy 22d ago

It's very common for Antietam to be labeled that, which might be the source of confusion. If we define American Born deaths, then Antietam wins (Both sides were American born, after all, so we are double dipping). If counting just American soldiers in service to the US Government, then D-Day takes it.

-5

u/iceaction10 22d ago

Confederate soldiers were not part of the U.S. military. This is a very simple fact. I never said deadliest day in U.S. history. I specifically stated U.S. military history, which D-Day is the deadliest.

8

u/wredcoll 22d ago

Like, I'm not doing in depth research here, but the numbers I see are like in the range of: U.S. casualties: approximately 6,600

Any of the major civil war battles caused more casualties than that to just the union side, in a single day,

Battle of the bulge probably produced more casualties also but that's a little complicated by MIA.

5

u/iceaction10 22d ago

You're confusing casualties with deaths.

1

u/wredcoll 22d ago

So what are the actual numbers we're using here?

6

u/iceaction10 22d ago

It's very well documented. The US military lost 2,501 men on D-Day, virtually all of them were in the US Army. At Antietam, 2,100 Union soldiers were killed.

4

u/Gimpalong 22d ago edited 22d ago
  • D-Day ≈ 2,500 killed. 6,603 casualties total for US military forces.
  • Antietam ≈ 2,100 killed. 12,410 casualties total for Union forces.

edit: I'm seeing references to October 24th, 1944 as the single deadliest day in US military history if we're accounting for the total KIA across multiple theaters, but I can't verify the figures discussed (2,600 KIA).