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In Saving Private Ryan they land on normandy with boats that open from the front and everyone pours out. Did the people in the front not know they would most likely be shot instantly? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to c/askhistorians@lemmy.world

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[–] IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The movie depicted the landings on Omaha beach, which turned out to be the deadliest landing site on D-Day. There were approximately 2400 casualties, out of roughly 34,000 that landed there.

Compare that to the beach with the fewest casualties. The landings at Utah beach suffered only about 200 casualties due to a number of favorable conditions, which included far fewer German defenders. That’s out of over 20,000 troops that landed at Utah that day.

The allies knew there were German defenses, but they had very limited information immediately ahead of time about the location & strength of those defenses. 160,000 troops landed along 5 beaches that day. There were approximately 10,000 casualties in total.