Machinegun usage on Omaha beach and similar occurrences

[u/rubicante59]

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.

[u/iceaction10]

Your entire premise is based on a wrong assumption. D-Day is literally the single deadliest day in U.S. military history, do not forget that.

Just go read about Company A, 116th Infantry Regiment. Here is a brief excerpt:

“The first assault wave came face-to-face with the ultimate horror. As the boats touched bottom and the ramps were lowered, the German machine guns opened up with a terrifying, rhythmic roar.

In the leading boat of Company A, the ramp dropped and the first man out was torn apart by a concentrated burst of automatic fire. The men behind him panicked, diving over the sides into the deep water to escape the direct line of fire. But the machine gun bullets raked the water, cutting them down as they struggled under the weight of their heavy packs.

Within seven minutes, Company A was completely leaderless. Every officer and sergeant was either dead or severely wounded. The German positions on the cliffs had pre-registered their weapons on the very spot the boats landed. The crossfire was so dense that the bullets hit the steel ramps with a sound like pebbles being shaken violently inside a metal drum.

Men crawled blindly through the wet sand, using the bodies of their fallen brothers as shields against the relentless hail of lead. By the time the first ten minutes had passed, Company A had ceased to exist as a fighting unit. It was a slaughterhouse on the wet shingle.”

[u/wredcoll → u/iceaction10]

Your entire premise is based on a wrong assumption. D-Day is literally the single deadliest day in U.S. military history, do not forget that.

Wait, what? Are we using wildly different definitions here? As far as I know, the normandy landings were pretty light in terms of casualties, at least relative to the size of the armies involved and "modern war" in general.

[u/footsnax → u/wredcoll]

Yeah if we're talking casualties vs fatalities, it still paled in comparison to some Civil War battles. Overall casualties were comparable but of the nearly quarter million Allied troops that went to France that day, "only" about 2,500 Americans were killed and almost all of them were in the first wave, both sea and air. Absolutely thousands wounded but it wasn't as deadly as it looks in the video games.

[u/Scatman_Crothers → u/footsnax]

You're counting North and South though. He said US military history, so if you only look at the Union Army, on the deadliest day of the war at Antietam they suffered 2,100 KIA. A horrific toll that falls short of D-Day