To reduce the number of German troops guarding the beaches of Omaha and Utah, as well as to make sure the Nazi Army didn’t know the exact time and location of the amphibious attacks, a fake army was implemented to trick Hitler’s plans into thinking that there was a powerful Army, under the command of a well known General being amassed away from the landing sights of Normandy (Hastings, 1985). Operation Bodyguard, as the entirety of the deception Operations were called, was designed to mislead the German Army away from the landing and the time in which the attack was to happen (Hesketh, 2000).Fictionally located at Kent and Sussex, Under the command of Lieutenant General George S. Patton, a fake Army Unit named The first United States Army …show more content…
Even though they may just have been rehearsals for the real thing several problems arose from them. On April 27th of 1944, during a forgotten rehearsal of the Normandy landings a communication problem with one of the naval gunboats about the change in schedule, which was to simply fire overhead of the troops, lead to them firing earlier that they were told to ( Corrigan 2011) . The rescheduling ment that the troops were to arrive one hour later than expected, and put the troops right where the naval boat was to fire overhead of them. This did not allow the troops training on the island get off in time resulting in friendly fire. The mistake in communications of exercise tiger killed 28 troops( Corrigan, 2011). On the following day of April 28th, 1944 of the practice assault a follow up of troops was attacked by nine German E-Boat. Only one of the two boat meant to protect the convoy was present at the time of the attack due to structural repairs needed on it (Hasting 1985).They were being transported in lined fashion which made it an easy target for a German E-Boat.This failure in protecting the American LSTs ships resulting in 946 casualties and 4 ships …show more content…
The amphibious landing attack was planned to arrive after the bombing of the fortifications of the beach and the landing of Airborne troops behind the fortifications. In the hours before the invasion four of the U.S’s transports ships wait of coast 12 mile from shore (Dank, 1984). They plan their attack in four waves in four waves. The first attack being planned at 6:30 to take part of the Eighth Division to the West of the beach and the another part to the East (Kershaw,1984). Five minutes later the second wave was to take the rest of the 8th Infantry as well as a team of engineers to clear out the obstacles that prevented the tanks from making it to shore (McManus, 2011). The final third and fourth wave consisted of tanks outfitted with bulldozer parts to clear a way for more heavy mechanized battalions to arrive (Corrigan, 2011). Yet the actual landing worked out better than planned. The first landing party of Utah at 6:30 suffered minimal casualties due to the wind diverting the landing party more South of the beach than intended. As well as that, a powerful storm before the landings took place washed up a lot of the obstacles that were to make the landing difficult (Weintraub, 1995). The location had less fortifications that the intended target as well, the bomber planes were able to fly far lower than expected, resulting