Utah Beach: The Amphibious Landing and Airborne Operations on D-day, June 6, 1944 by Joseph Balkoski

Author:Joseph Balkoski [Balkoski, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-10-29T05:53:00+00:00

Utah Beach and Iles St. Marcouf: H-Hour, June 6, 1944

No one denied that the cavalrymen's task would be treacherous. Even if not a single German occupied the Iles St. Marcouf, the Royal Navy landing craft crews drawn from the British transport Empire Gauntlet would have to load the GIs into four LCAs, locate those two minuscule islets in darkness, sail through waters swarming with enemy mines that had not yet been swept, and land their passengers on a rocky shoreline that only expert coxswains could reach safely.

Lt. Col. Edward Dunn, the thirty-one-year-old task force commander and 1936 West Point graduate, devised a simple plan of attack. At 4:30 A.M., guided by a pair of two-man scout sections in rubber boats, two British landing craft, each loaded with about thirty troopers, would land on what the dubious planners had cautiously categorized as a "beach" on the Ile du Large. The other two landing craft would peel off and land their GIs on the smaller island, Ile de Terre. The islands were too small for any elaborate maneuvers, so in the event Germans were present, there would definitely be some intense close-in fighting.

Fortunately, the enemy was absent-but even so, the Iles St. Marcouf were an exceptionally dangerous place.

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