June 6, 1944

Pictured above is an amazing aerial photograph of Omaha Beach during the latter hours of the horrible amphibious assault that took place there, June 6th, 1944. This photograph was taken by an American bomber flying over Omaha Beach, most likely returning from the hundreds of bombing missions that were occurring all across Normandy and France as a whole. All of those black dots you see are the bodies of killed or seriously wounded American soldiers. You can see the vast majority never even made it 10 feet from the shoreline and were most likely cut down the second they lef their boat. The ride has also pushed in, probably sweeping even more bodies out to see. Had this picture been taken 3 hours earlier, there would’ve been many more black dots (the bodies of American GIs) and chaos visible. In the weeks following D-Day, hundreds of bodies would wash up on shore. So many that the men of the grave registration could not keep up and many units on Omaha would take matters into their own hands: taking the mens dogtags if they had them and then burning their bodies. Most gave up with this after a couple weeks due to the sheer amount that arrived on ashore after the tide came in and went out. If you look closely at the photograph you can see what looks like oil on the upper lefthand side of the photograph, just off the shoreline. This isn’t oil, this is the blood of those who were killed in the ferocious fighting that day. Undoubtedly one of the most profound and heart stopping photographs from the war and specifically from D-Day. It shows you the true carnage of that day on “Bloody Omaha”, in a very intimate and personal way. May all of the men of the US Army Rangers, 29th Infantry Division, and 1st Infantry Division who died in Omaha that day and those who were killed in the subsequent fighting rest in peace.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/the_ww2_memoirs