While I love a good WW2 film, I do have a couple of questions about the D-Day landings..

1. Why didnt the Allies flood the beaches with smoke to make the landings easier?

2. Who thought that it would be a good idea to design landing craft with dropdown front doors? Manslaughter, literally.

1. so when they run out of the smoke…what happens then?

2. erm…you do know how beaches work?

Anyway, Shaving Ryan’s Privates is better.

2. Who thought that it would be a good idea to design landing craft with dropdown front doors? Manslaughter, literally.

[Disclaimer: my history knowledge is very limited – at best] The air force were supposed to have levelled the beach defences before anyone got there – they missed

1. Why didnt the Allies flood the beaches with smoke to make the landings easier? Wind

2. Who thought that it would be a good idea to design landing craft with dropdown front doors? Manslaughter, literally. Jerry would eventually run out of bullets
😐
Never really gave a damn about teh D-Day landings until going over tthere to collect a medal for a relative who was one of the glider dudes. An emotional place.

More to the point, why oh why oh why oh why did they depict bullets that hit water at a shallow angle and A. Don’t ricochet off the surface or, B. Fail to travel more than a few feet at the very most? 🙄

dramatic licence? it made for some good underwater scenes.

Band of Brothers was better- a masterpiece might i say.

From a program I watched about the history and the making of Saving P Ryan. They did not use ‘those landing craft’ they used a British variant which didn’t have stupid door and were armoured to the teeth.

Also yes bullets dont travel through water and would not kill anyone. Many unfortunately drowned though 🙁

Edit – ok so a little wrong, they did have front doors but were still armed to the teeth compared to how the film depicted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Craft_Assault

I run a quarry that used to be an airfield.
Anyway oldboy turns up and asks to have a look at the old control tower thats still there. Normally i say no, but he was distraught at not seeing it. So after a bit of banter – he explains that he’d been to a reunion at Normandy and got chatting to another oldboy who served – where i now work. He’d promised his friend that he’d have a look and give him a call to let him know if it was still there – knowing that there not going to be around much longer).
Turns out the guy that came to see the tower was a gunner( he had gunners twitch – not able to keep his head straight always looking left and right).
All i can say is, that if hadn’t taken a breath and realised what these guys and gals did for us. I would have missed an interesting hour of war tales.
It was almost as good as listening to my grandad and his tank tales from africa – which is probably why i like war films.

rossi46 – Member

Band of Brothers was better- a masterpiece might i say.

Band of Brothers is in a whole different league to Saving Private Ryan. The Pacific is awesome too

That’s because it is true – Steven Ambrose is a historian and did extensive interviews with actual soldiers (many of whom feature in the programmes).

But my recollection of DDay is that the bombers didn’t do their expected job, barely making an impact on the defences when the expectation was that they would annihilate them.

That’s because it is true

nope, it’s because it’s a better story. Being true just makes it even moar awesome!

There is that. But the interviews with the old guys at the end brought a tear to my eye. None of us could ever comprehend what anyone serving on the frontline ever encountered, either Allies or Axis.

great film , “dont shoot em let em burn” .

Absolutely brilliant , but as had been said Band of Brothers is much better. Pacific was IMO knowhere near as good as either.
Sad that the surviviors of ‘The Great War’ are all gone and even WWII are dwindling fast.
Whilst I still think Iraq and Afghanistan are obviously about Oil I still respect the troops serving there.

‘Lest we Forget’

Preferred Saving Private Lion

I preferred Shaving Ryan’s Privates.

But my recollection of DDay is….

You look good for your age 🙂

I think its easy to criticise things like front opening doors on landing craft when you’ve got more than half a century of hindsight. There was a war on you know – desperate times and desperate efforts. Its easy to forget how short a period of time the war covered too – when you consider how long things like Afganistan and Iraq have rumbled on for, and yet how much material was developed and manufactured for it in that time. The landings were just one moment in the whole war – why would there be a fleet of specific craft sitting ready just for that.

I saw an interview with one of the survivors of the Dunkirk landings. He and all is companions had been issued with six bullets each. “I pretty sure I used them all” it said

he had gunners twitch – not able to keep his head straight always looking left and right

My Grandad was in signals, he used to tap out conversations in Morse as he was talking… 50 years after the war had ended!

He never spoke to me about his experiences but after he died I got his medals, assorted memorabilia and his photos. He was a keen photographer and was permitted to take his camera to the front. In the photos they are just a bunch on smiling kids in ill fitting uniforms.

In his collection he has a set of german binoculars, papers and Nazi insignia cut off a uniform. I hope that the guy he got them off made it past the kid in an ill fitting uniform stage.

I am 23 years older than he was at the end of the war and cannot comprehend what he went through.

Saving Private Ryan is ‘ok’. The only good bit is the village scene at the end. It comes close to capturing the confusion/melee (what I imagine it would be like).

I switched over to SouthPark 😆

This bloke is believed (depending who you talk to) to have inflicted the lions share of casualties on Omaha beach. Quite horrifying really.

What was he supposed to do though? He and others were the frontline.

Not saying he didn’t do his duty. Just saying it’s mind boggling the number of people he killed and wounded considering he was “face to face” rather than dropping a bomb.

The landings were just one moment in the whole war – why would there be a fleet of specific craft sitting ready just for that.

The craft are called “landing craft” for a reason – care to hazard a guess what that might be? There might be fleet of these “landing craft” prepared because the planned D-day “landings” would involve “landing” large numbers of men and equipment on a beach or beaches.

I saw an interview with one of the survivors of the Dunkirk landings

Dunkirk was an evacuation, not a landing

Also, landing craft were used in North Africa and Italy and a good number were sent after DDay to the Pacific for use in the proposed landings in Japan.

Landing craft not a hugely different to the ones used in WW2 are still in service (mainly in 3 Commando bde) today.

Used in the falklands;