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Omaha is a gently sloping beach on the north coast of Normandy that forms a shallow concave impression between long, hundred foot high cliffs which run from Port en Bessin to Grandcamp Maisy.
The beach itself, which is much the same as it was in 1944, is near to six thousand yards long and is almost devoid of natural obstacles. It is formed by a gentle slope of compacted sand, some three hundred yards in width across which runs an ever changing lattice of runnels, parallel to the shoreline, which at low tide are between eighteen inches and two and a half feet deep.
Omaha Beach with the village of Colleville-sur-Mer beyond
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At the top of the beach is a band of shingle, a deep mass of multiple-sized, polished stones of varying colour which run almost the entire length of the shore.
German soldier arming an anti-personnel mine
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Rommel inspecting the beach fortifications
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The troops that successfully navigated the first stretch had to cross a belt of shingle and what was effectively a narrow, flat shelf before climbing the bluffs.
This shelf was well covered with mines of all types and, of course, barbed wire. Above the wire and either on top or near the top of the bluff were a succession of nests containing automatic weapons, placed in enfilade to make the most efficient killing ground on the beach.
At either end of the crescent shaped beach there were four massive concrete casements which held, mostly, a seventy five mm gun.
Now and again there were smaller and less obvious gun positions which contained anti-tank guns.
Omaha Beach Map
Stamped 'BIGOT', code name for a security level beyond 'Top Secret'
this map got US Troops to the eastern sectors of Omaha Beach.
Only the highest ranking officers and a few specialists held BIGOT clearance.
So restricted was the BIGOT project that when King George visited a command ship and asked what was behind a curtained compartment, he was politely turned away because, as a sentinel officer later said, "Nobody told me he was a Bigot".
Many map details came from Allied spies who risked their lives in German-occupied France. The maps detailed under water obstacles, trenches, minefields and German defences, from bunkers to individual mortars.
A naval map (image below) gave invasion ships specific German targets. Firing over the heads of her own countrymen, one US destroyer silenced an 88 mm German gun by putting two rounds through the gun shield. Beyond tragets, BIGOT maps could show where to bivouac, where to set up supply dumps and even where to bury the dead.
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