Utah beach was a bit out of the way, so we had not planned to go there but as we were driving back to our B&B we had a couple of hours before sunset so off we went. There was a nice museum at Utah Beach which we knew would be closed when we got there but they still had some cool exhibits outside.
Utah beach was the only other beach that was preceded by paratroopers who dropped in behind the lines prior to the landings. The soldiers who landed on the beach faired relatively well but the poor paratroopers weren’t so lucky. Despite their losses, they did succeed in cutting off any support to the Germans defending the beach.
Everything in the assault seemed to go wrong from the beginning but the failures turned out to be blessings. Four ships were guiding the landing craft in but three of them were lost due to mines. The remaining ships were blown three miles off course, but it turned out that where they landed there were very few defenses on the beach and out of the twenty-one thousand troops that attacked, they lost 197 soldiers.
The paratroopers on the other hand suffered one blow after another. Strong winds blew them five miles off course and scattered them, plus, many of them fell into swamps and drowned. Of the fourteen thousand paratroopers who jumped, 2,500 didn’t make it. Fortunately, the Germans weren’t able to take advantage of the chaos, or the losses would have been worse.
Paratroopers were only dropped behind Utah beach, the furthest west beach and Sword beach, the furthest east beach. Their purpose wasn’t to support the landing, but to protect the flanks of the landings from German support. Despite the problems, the paratroopers were successful in preventing any German support from getting to the beaches.
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