Posted: 6/6/2009 4:09:00 PM EDT
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So i've had Military channel on for the last few hours in the background and i had a question for you WWII buffs out there.
When they landed on the beaches in the Higgins boats, what did the crews of the boat do? I'm assuming the crews were either Navy or Coast Guard? Did they just wait around in their boats and evacuate wounded? Did they turn around and try to head back to their main ships? Were they ferrying men and equipment all day, or was it a one time in type deal? I'm just curious what they did while the assault was taking place. |
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Quoted:
So i've had Military channel on for the last few hours in the background and i had a question for you WWII buffs out there. When they landed on the beaches in the Higgins boats, what did the crews of the boat do? I'm assuming the crews were either Navy or Coast Guard? Did they just wait around in their boats and evacuate wounded? Did they turn around and try to head back to their main ships? Were they ferrying men and equipment all day, or was it a one time in type deal? I'm just curious what they did while the assault was taking place. Turned around, got more troops |
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Quoted:
So i've had Military channel on for the last few hours in the background and i had a question for you WWII buffs out there. When they landed on the beaches in the Higgins boats, what did the crews of the boat do? I'm assuming the crews were either Navy or Coast Guard? Did they just wait around in their boats and evacuate wounded? Did they turn around and try to head back to their main ships? Were they ferrying men and equipment all day, or was it a one time in type deal? I'm just curious what they did while the assault was taking place. Wave on the beach, wave loaded heading in, wave loading, wave returning to the ships for more. |
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So those guys were pretty successful at navigating the obstacles in the water? I figured they took men and equipment all day, but i imagine many boats took damage, or got hung up in the obstacles? So true. They did their jobs, until they couldn't. If their boats got damaged, or sunk, but they were okay, they did something, anything else, to help out. Read "D-Day" by Steven Ambrose. It tells of this. Great book, too. |
| Here's 16 pages of Ambroses book, it's well worth your time to read the book if your interested in what it took to make D-Day happen, and the various aspects of the men and machines the Allies used. http://search2.barnesandnoble.com/BookViewer/?ean=9780684801377 |
My grandfather was in the Navy during Tarawa, I believe, perhaps Okinawa and was on the PT boats. He took marines in and had to kick and punch them out of the boat, because they were being shot at and he had more troops to get, they were crying for their mothers. Truly sad deal, he never would take about it much with my older relatives.  I'd assume it would be similar for D-Day. From what I gathered my grandfather got on the boats for fighting too much, but I don't know for certain. I wonder how people did get chosen?
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My grandfather was in the Navy during Tarawa, I believe, perhaps Okinawa and was on the PT boats. He took marines in and had to kick and punch them out of the boat, because they were being shot at and he had more troops to get, they were crying for their mothers. Truly sad deal, he never would take about it much with my older relatives. I'd assume it would be similar for D-Day. From what I gathered my grandfather got on the boats for fighting too much, but I don't know for certain. I wonder how people did get chosen?Amazing. I can't even begin to imagine what it was like on that day, or any other amphibious assault. It seems to me the Navy must have needed to have provisions in place to get more men on the beaches in the event a high percentage of the boats were sunk or unable to return? I'll see if the library has that book, i enjoy WWII history, but was unsure if anyone specifically wrote about the men who brought them on shore. |
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My grandfather was in the Navy during Tarawa, I believe, perhaps Okinawa and was on the PT boats. He took marines in and had to kick and punch them out of the boat, because they were being shot at and he had more troops to get, they were crying for their mothers. Truly sad deal, he never would take about it much with my older relatives. I'd assume it would be similar for D-Day. From what I gathered my grandfather got on the boats for fighting too much, but I don't know for certain. I wonder how people did get chosen?The part of war that's not shown in movies...those are scared, terrified men going on to those beaches. If you read psychology of war books, it's an amazingly low percentage of guys that actually did the fighting. The rest tried to do anything but. Fire randomly, run ammo, evacuate a wounded guy (it got them away from the fighting...). More modern training has us upwards of 90% actually contributing to the fight. WWII it was estimated somewhere between 25-50%. There were amazingly less, than most think, of men like your grandfather... |