Capturing Point-du-Hoc

[Jim]

The slaughter and confusion on ‘Easy Red’ was more than matched by the scene 8km/5mls to the west at Pointe-du-Hoc, a commanding promontory, on top of which the Americans believed there was a powerful German battery of six 155-mm guns. These had a range of more than 19km/12mls, and dominated the coast from Port-en-Bessin in the British sector to a point northwest of Utah Beach. It was fear of the power and range of these guns that led to the US landing craft being lowered some I8km/11mls offshore, subjecting the troops to an exhausting three-hour ride through rough seas.

Douglas A-20 Bombers of the 9th Air Force returning back to base after dropping their load over Pointe-du-Hoc in May of 1944

The US Rangers, who had been training for weeks in similar conditions, were given the dangerous task of scaling the cliffs under concentrated fire to silence the guns. Some 200 Rangers, equipped with rocket guns firing grapnels, ropes and ladders, were to be put ashore at H-Hour. Their landing craft, however, moved east of the landing site; when the error was discovered, they had to approach it by a course parallel to the shore, exposing them to fire from the cliff top. A number of vessels were sunk; others were so badly damaged their cargo had to be jettisoned.

Coastal artillery always outgunned ships because its firing platform was more stable and its range was greater than that of all but the biggest naval guns.

The pre-invasion naval bombardment had stopped when the Rangers reached their correct landing point, and the Germans had re-manned the fortifications. Soaked, suffering from seasickness, and under heavy small-arms and grenade attack from above, the Rangers battled to scale the cliff. To assist them, the US destroyer Satterlee opened fire on German positions on Pointe-du-Hoc, enabling the first men to reach the top within five minutes of landing on the beach.
When they reached the summit, the Rangers found that the guns, the destruction of which had been the object of their desperate endeavour, were no longer there. To save them from earlier aerial and naval bombardment, the Germans had moved them to a more secure site, an orchard one mile inland, where the Rangers later discovered them; they had never been fired. Having taken Pointe-du-Hoc, the Rangers moved on to cut the coastal highway between Vierville and Grandcamp and establish a defensive position there.
Coastal artillery, such as the German 155-mm gun battery at Pointe-du-Hoc, needed the correct type of fire control equipment to perform its principal task, the destruction of enemy warships.

Before the main American landings began on Omaha and Utah Beaches at 06.30 on 6 June, a raiding force of 225 US Rangers (I) went ashore to knock out a German gun position on top of Pointe-du-Hoc (2), which dominated both landing areas. After scaling the 100-ft cliff under strong attack, the Rangers found that the heavy artillery had been removed. Later they came across-and destroyed-the missing guns near the main road (3) a short distance inland from their original position.



Rangers scaling the cliffs at Pointe-du-Hoc.