Pointe du Hoc 2017
by jkatpc
Pointe du Hoc-- Lieutenant Colonel James Earl Rudder, an Aggie, led his battalion of Rangers up the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc. Their mission was to destroy, using thermite grenades, the guns at the top of the cliffs that could provide withering firepower against the troops landing at both Utah and Omaha beaches. The Rangers practiced at the cliffs on the Isle of Wight prior to D-Day, but when the time came, found that the cliffs at Pte du Hoc were higher than they had planned for, the shale was weakened from naval gunfire and the weather soaked the rocket propelled ropes, limiting their range. They were able to get a few to hold. One landing craft sank and all but one occupant drowned. The guns were not at the top as reported by intelligence, but had been moved (eventually found nearby and destroyed with the thermite grenades). As Kathi and I walked up, I wondered at the large depression in the ground before me and commented that it looked like a crater. It, and many more like it, reshaped the cliff top like some sort of inverted golf course. Surely, if those guns had been in place, the awesome firepower from the naval bombardment would have destroyed them.
