I heard that it is the most complex and difficult of all military manuevers.

But why?

watch saving private ryan and you'll figure it out on your own

Quoted: watch saving private ryan and you'll figure it out on your own

I'm interested more in the exact complexities. And that was a movie, IIRC

You land troops on a beach using vehicles that operate on both water and land.  Troops land on the beach and take over.  Tough concept.

I guess it is hard because of entrenched enemy positions located on the highpoints of dunes and rocky cliffs.

Quoted: I heard that it is the most complex and difficult of all military manuevers. But why?

Mainly it's the logistics. In WWII an amphibious assault used members of all five services and required a high degree of coordination, timing and cooperation.

ETA: Not to mention you have to establish your own supply lines underfire.

Quoted: You land troops on a beach using vehicles that operate on both water and land.  Troops land on the beach and take over.  Tough concept. I guess it is hard because of entrenched enemy positions located on the highpoints of dunes and rocky cliffs.

And your troops have close to 0 cover on the approach...

Its when salamanders attack!

Sea to shore entries are very dangerous, can be easily defended against and mined fairly easily. The only ones that do amphibious assults are seals and Marines.

We practiced and practiced Amphibious assaults. That is the main mission of the Marine Corp.
The problem with Amphibious assaults is that there is no element of suprise.

You wake up one morning, you look outside, dozen of ships out in the bay. Ok, set up defenses and mine the hell out of the place.

Little boats start leaving the big ships full of Marines, Use the big guns till they get close, then use .50's on the landing craft when they hit the beach, then start with mortars and smaller arms to get what's left.

It isn't very often we do a beach landing at night. The only one I remember was when we first got to Kuwait, but then again, they(The Kuwaitis) knew we were coming, so it didn't matter anyway.

Its what you get charged with when you run over a turtle.

Let's see if I can beat LWilde with a more detailed response.

This is all very high level:

#1 You have to survey the beach. Make sure it can take your heavy equipment and is suited to a landing. Get the tidal range, currents, etc. The SEALs can trace their heritage to this mission and are still capable of performing it.
#2 You have to rehearse the attack and load the ships with a combat load out. What is to be offloaded first is loaded last, what is offloaded last is loaded first.
#3 The day of the attack you have to do the following:
-Clear any minefields.
-Prep the beach with naval guns and aircraft.
-Deploy landing craft.
-Embark troops on the landing craft.
-Amass the landing craft in waves. Coordinating small boats and keeping them in their lanes is akin to herding cats thanks to tides, currents and winds.
Oh BTW, that is all under fire.
#4 Once the force is landing, you have to continue to coordinate air and naval gun fire support. Then you have to evacuate casualties ashore back to the ships.
#5 While the force is fighting ashore you have to supply them from ship. Which means you have to unload the ships, load follow on troops and supplies for the troops already ashore onto boats and send them in, under fire.
-You have to continue #5 until there are no more enemy troops around to challenge your beachhead.
#6 You have to either capture or build port facilites to sustain the forces ashore. Only then is the amphibious operation over, and you still have to supply by sea.

We're not even talking about landing airborne/airmobile troops at the same time, like D-Day. The amount of coordination is phenomenal. Not only that you have to make the right calls, do you need more troops, equipment or supplies ashore at any given time. The wrong mix and you can spiral yourself into disaster.

Its not hard for professional militaries with special units that specifically train and preserve institutional knowledge of the mission.  Its hard for first timers and lower trained forces.

It was doubly hard before communications and control systems became as advanced as they are now.  Plus it was hard when you attempted it when no one had ever done it in a modern time period.

Quoted: Its what you get charged with when you run over a turtle.

LOL, that's funny and true. When we were doin them in Cali, they specifically told us to watch out for turtle. hahahaha

Quoted: Its not hard for professional militaries with special units that specifically train and preserve institutional knowledge of the mission.  Its hard for first timers and lower trained forces.

There were only two, arguably three, militaries in the world who have done it. It's hard, even with advanced technology. In fact, in some ways advanced technology makes it harder because of the distances involved.

Quoted: Quoted: Its not hard for professional militaries with special units that specifically train and preserve institutional knowledge of the mission.  Its hard for first timers and lower trained forces. There were only two, arguably three, militaries in the world who have done it. It's hard, even with advanced technology. In fact, in some ways advanced technology makes it harder because of the distances involved.

Hard is a relative term.

I don't consider it hard for say the US or UK or some other first rate forces.  I would be hard for them if they had a chance of being defeated/crapping the op up.  I mean its not like we will hard lcacs and boats in bad weather and get them swamped and sink the landing force, or not know how to pick the right beach.

Its only hard when one doesn't do the appropriate prep-work.  If you've done the work then everything is easy, just like life.  I don't mean to diminish how *difficult* and demanding a mission it is, but hard implies that on some level there is a likelihood it can't be done.

I was tryin to give the quick and easy response. Good explanation dport.

There is also the MCI on Amphibious landing/assaults. We could always refer to that  

Also "back in the day" you had to have a beach with the perfect conditions in order to put landing craft on it. Just the right tides, gradiant, composition, etc. or you couldn't go. Thus you started out with a small number of possible landing sites to begin with. Add to that then the defensive stuff already mentioned.

Of course, with the creation of the LCAC and such, that's no longer as large a problem.

Quoted: I don't consider it hard for say the US or UK or some other first rate forces.

And just how much experience do you have with amphibious operations?

It is the most difficult military operation that's why only first rate forces have accomplished it. Only the US and UK have been able to pull it off across decades and both nations regard it as a difficult operation. The Japanese were able to do it on a smaller scale in WWII and they had unsucessful amphibious assaults, the initial assault on Wake comes to mind.

YAT YAS!

ETA
Even the modern (US) USMC Amphibious landings have an approximate 30% success probability.
(Read: losing 70%).  Often when you are talking within (USMC) circles, they refer to 1833's as "Real Marines".

And I'll say again,   YAT YAS !!!

Semper Fi

1833?
I assume that's an MOS.
Ampibious Assaultman?
1833 Assault Amphibious Vehicle (AAV) Crewman

Quoted: ETA Even the modern (US) USMC Amphibious landings have an approximate 30% success probability. (Read: losing 70%).  Often when you are talking within (USMC) circles, they refer to 1833's as "Real Marines". And I'll say again,   YAT YAS !!! Semper Fi

1833's huh? Aren't you the guys that are cleaning the squad bays cause theirs no beaches to assault? I though all Marines were real Marines, especially the 03 variety.

Quoted: Let's see if I can beat LWilde with a more detailed response. This is all very high level: #1 You have to survey the beach. Make sure it can take your heavy equipment and is suited to a landing. Get the tidal range, currents, etc. The SEALs can trace their heritage to this mission and are still capable of performing it. #2 You have to rehearse the attack and load the ships with a combat load out. What is to be offloaded first is loaded last, what is offloaded last is loaded first. #3 The day of the attack you have to do the following: -Clear any minefields. -Prep the beach with naval guns and aircraft. -Deploy landing craft. -Embark troops on the landing craft. -Amass the landing craft in waves. Coordinating small boats and keeping them in their lanes is akin to herding cats thanks to tides, currents and winds. Oh BTW, that is all under fire. #4 Once the force is landing, you have to continue to coordinate air and naval gun fire support. Then you have to evacuate casualties ashore back to the ships. #5 While the force is fighting ashore you have to supply them from ship. Which means you have to unload the ships, load follow on troops and supplies for the troops already ashore onto boats and send them in, under fire. -You have to continue #5 until there are no more enemy troops around to challenge your beachhead. #6 You have to either capture or build port facilites to sustain the forces ashore. Only then is the amphibious operation over, and you still have to supply by sea. We're not even talking about landing airborne/airmobile troops at the same time, like D-Day. The amount of coordination is phenomenal. Not only that you have to make the right calls, do you need more troops, equipment or supplies ashore at any given time. The wrong mix and you can spiral yourself into disaster.

Good description DPORT. Something else to think about in the WWII era was the weather. If you had weather you lost all effective air cover even if you "owned the skies" D-Day (june 6 ) nearly didn't happen because of the cruddy weather and lots of the tank swamping and related losses were partly due to rough water.
The man made ports at the beach heads only lasted about a week or ten days before they got wiped by a storm,if it had ben a couple days earlier the troops that had landed would have been in big trouble.
To really learn about WWII D DAY I recomend  "OVERLOARD,D-day & The Battle For Normanday" by Max Hastings.

Amphi-bios, meaning two bodies.
In this case one exists on water, the other on land.

ALSO, when salamanders attach.

Actually our Army has dome more than the Marines and has some of it's own landing ships.  In fact in the 70's the Army had more vessels than the Navy.  Although that has probably changed significantly
..

Lessee (from 1973 - those programmed texts were pretty good) PERMA

Planning
Embarkation
Rehearsal
Movement
Assault

Assaults, Demonstrations, Raids, Evacuations

Assaults - Land and stay

Demonstrations - Pretending you are going to land to deceive the enemy (Gulf War I the Marines burning circles in the Gulf making Saddam think they were going to land and tying up some of his forces)

Raids - landing and leaving

Evacuations - Pulling retreating or surrounded forces off, opposed or unopposed

The current preferred method is to go around via helo borne or airborne troops, secure a landing zone, and bring the heavy ships up and directly offload as much as possible.  The landing zone to include port facilities if possible for the big Ro-Ro ships.  Although you can build causeways out from the beach and offload the ships to the causeways.

The US and UK have more practiced forces, lots of countries have limited capabilities.

We really can't do a big over the beach operation anymore since we don't have near the shipping and landing craft readily available.  That's why we need a landing zones that can take big ships close in.