Air support over the Normandy Beach Head

[pinehilljoe]

Are there any accounts of tactical air support over the beach head? I haven't found any. Was this a hole in the plan, or were the ships told to shoot at anything in the air, the Allied planes stayed away. I wonder if Omaha could have gone better with the kind of support Marines had from the Taffy carriers or Marine Air Groups.

 

[pbehn]

Are there any accounts of tactical air support over the beach head? I haven't found any. Was this a hole in the plan, or were the ships told to shoot at anything in the air, the Allied planes stayed away. I wonder if Omaha could have gone better with the kind of support Marines had from the Taffy carriers or Marine Air Groups.

The ships were certainly not told to shoot at anything in the air because it was my uncles job to identify friend or foe on a US gun ship, a converted Liberty ship, he was seconded from bomber command to the Royal Observer Corps at the time. From what I have read about Omaha the fighting was at such close quarters that air support would probably have been counter productive and there was a bombardment going on by ships further inland.

I believe at some time during the D Day operation or later there was a preference for using P38s near the fleet as it was easily identified as a "friend" by all.

The fundamental problem was that almost all of the US personnel were completely new to the European theatre and had never been under fire before and for example the Typhoon and FW190 were so alike in the air that the Typhoon was given stripes to identify it, these became the fore runners of "D Day stripes".

 

[fubar57]

The last one is more a pictorial of reconnaissance photos

 

[Greg Boeser]

The Ninth AF flew maximum strength missions all day. Initial missions were to soften up the shore defenses on Utah Beach, later missions were interdiction missions further inland.