Engineers on OMAHA Beach

While researching engineer units on OMAHA Beach I did not come across any diagrams of the engineer plan with landing order and assignments. Since these were richly described in the text I decided to attempt a spatial representation. Below is a diagram of the beach landing order and assignments for the Engineer Combat Battalions. North is at the bottom of the diagram so you are looking at the plan from the Allied point of view (from sea to shore). The 16th Infantry landed on the left (or east) and the 116th Infantry landed on the right (or west).

Generally the division engineers (1st ID and 29th ID) had the assignment of clearing the beach exits through the draws, coded right to left as D-1, D-3, E-1, E-3, F-1. While the battalions of the Engineer Special Brigade had the assignment to "assist moving an infantry regiment across the beach". These were the 16th, 116th, 18th, and 115th Infantry. Exactly what they did to 'assist' I have little idea. I suspect it had more to do with getting their essential vehicles across the beach rather than assisting in frontline combat. Of course with the mess on OMAHA Beach everybody ended up in frontline combat.

One of the points I was researching was the bulldozers used in the assault. I found that in addition to the tankdozers used by the gaps teams of the Special Engineer Task Force, a dozer was assigned to each ECB with multiple operators. It is unclear to me if these were armored dozers. Many sources say they were armored but a reliable source I used makes no mention of them. There seems to be little photographic evidence for armored dozers on OMAHA Beach.

Keep in mind the engineers landed among the infantry, armor, field artillery and AA artillery.


\/-North

16th Inf Zone ------- 116th Inf Zone

299th ECB ---------- 146th ECB --------- SETF beach obstacle gap teams*

1st ECB (E-1) ------- 112th ECB (D-3) --- Division Engineers

37th ECB (16) ------- 149th ECB (116) --- Engineer Special Brigade

20th ECB (E-3) ------ 121st ECB (D-1) --- Division Engineers - attached

348th ECB (18) ------ 147th ECB (115) --- Engineer Special Brigade

336th ECB (F-1) ------------------------- Engineer Special Brigade (elements landed before 1300hrs)

--------------254th ECB ----------------- V Corps Engineers (dozers on landing craft chart)

1 bulldozer added to each "early" ECB

*16 Tankdozers for SETF (carried by the LCT's of the 741st & 743d Tank Bn, 6 landed 5 destroyed)



121st AAR: "Two platoons of "C" Company landed on Easy Green beach from LCT’s at 061030 B hours with bulldozers and about one ton of explosives each."

Official history

"Mine-detector crews of Company C of the 37th Engineer Battalion followed to widen the lanes to accommodate vehicles. But the tanks could not get past the shingle, where they could get no traction. Behind the shingle lay a deep antitank ditch. Pvt. Vinton Dove, a bulldozer operator of Company C, made the first efforts to overcome these obstacles, assisted by his relief operator, Pvt. William J. Shoemaker, who alternated with him in driving and guiding the bulldozer. Dove cleared a road through the shingle, pulled out roadblocks at Exit E-1, and began working on the antitank ditch, which was soon filled with the help of dozer operators from Company B and a company of the 149th Engineer Combat Battalion that had landed near E-1 by mistake. ...."

"Wading ashore at Dog Green about 1500, troops of the 336th Engineer Combat Battalion assembled at the shingle bank and began a hazardous march toward Fox Red, more than two miles away. The unit moved in a long irregular column, followed by a D-7 tractor [bulldozer?] that towed a trailer loaded with explosives."

 

Thanks to an excellent find by forum member rkline56, the battalion history for the 348th ECB is available here.

http://digicom.bpl.lib.me.us/ww_reg_his/29/

Regrettably there is not much detail about the ESB's missions. But there are stories and pictures of the beach head, including transfer points where cranes lifted supplies from "DUKW to truck".

 

That was a great find by Rick. I was very surprised at the number and variety of non-infantry histories they have available to download.

 

My uncle CD Copeland was with !st Combat Engineers 1st ID on Omaha Beach, took bullet in cheek knocked teeth out, medivacted to England and returned to France, wounded 2nd time scrapnel in chest. Awarded Silver Star and 2 Purple Hearts. Passed in 95.

 

For anyone interested in this topic, the Bangor Maine collection linked above also has a regimental history for the 299th Engineer Combat Battalion, one of the Special Engineer Task Force units. They were one of the few deployed to both Omaha and Utah. I've learned quite a bit about the SETF over the years but I don't know it all... yet! For example, I don't know much about the bulldozers except the plan called for eight D-8s; one for every two Gap teams. The SETF commander, Col. O'Neill, recommended armored D-8s for any similar operation going forward but didn't say whether he had any or he didn't. I know that WOJG James W Tucker was the 299th's Assistant Motor Transport Officer in 1944 and apparently was given a citation for armoring the 299th D-8s and getting them all to shore, as well as for other action that day. (Whether that really means "all four" belonging to the 299th, or "all eight" belonging to the SETF isn't clear yet.) However, I've seen no photos of 299th D-8s with or without armor so I have no idea. I also have no idea how the bulldozers were brought across the Channel; they were not on the same LCT(A)s as the tank dozers.

One of the 146th ECB officers graduated from Oregon State University, and his memoirs reside there: Wesley Ross Memoir of World War II, 2009. There are a couple of versions of it available here and there online; Oregon State's is the most complete one I know of. It's helped greatly by having a large group of 146th veterans to help each other's memory iron out some differences, and they also had access to several battalion records, but as with any source, it's not without errors of detail.

It should be of interest to anyone studying the engineers on Omaha Beach that there's a deep-rooted misconception about helmet markings. I find that people think because some engineer helmets had crescents on them, all engineer helmets did. Not true. The 299th and 146th ECBs had no particular markings beyond some officers' rank on the front, and the horizontal or vertical leaders stripe on the back. The SETF Naval Combat Demolition Units had different markings than the Navy Beach Battalions.

As I understand the engineer beach clearing mission, the SETF was to clear the obstacles seaward of the shingle with the NCDUs working in the water and the ECBs working "dry-shod." The ECBs were to clear the beaches landward of the shingle and create lanes parallel to the beach to facilitate vehicle traffic to the exits. The lower-echelon engineers were to clear the draws and beach exits and to that end, did a lot of breaching of the shingle and barbed wire and minefield clearing as well as unspooling rolls of material to create temporary roads - easier for vehicles to traverse than sand. The SETF did also have men come ashore with mine detectors in boxes; that didn't work out very well. The SETF plan was to send 16 teams to clear and mark one gap each, 50 yards wide, all the way up to the shingle from low tide. After that, they were to widen the gaps until no obstacles remained and for that part, they were to work together with the ESBs. It took them three days to get them all, even with dozer blades.

The presence of D-7 tractors arriving with the waves at 1500 on D-Day doesn't imply bulldozers; engineer units needed tractors even without bulldozer blades and many came shore without them and without armored cabs.