Beast of Omaha

I'm doing a report on this, I wondered if anyone has any info on how Hein Severloh was discovered back in the 60's.

 

You forgot this one too Jeff. Maybe all 4 of these could be merged?

http://www.ww2f.com/wwii-general/20154-beast-omaha.html

 

I just wanted to find out how he was discovered in the 60's living in Germany.

 

Isn't there a search button somewhere in this forum? I remember having seen one...

There it is! Top of the page! "Home | User CP | Register | Members | FAQ| Search|

 

I used it, couldn't find any info about how he was discovered.

 

http://www.ww2f.com/counter-battery-fire/20250-use-search-function.html

 

I did.

 

I just did a search for him and found three threads on him, so what didn't you do?

 

Anyone who believes any one machinegunner on Omaha Beach killed 2000 American soldiers doesn't know much about modern warfare and hasn't visited Omaha Beach.

Regardless of the weapon used -MG42 or anything else (like for example the Americam M1919A4) one has to realize that rate of fire comparisons are not relevant except in pointing out the difficulty in providing ammunition. Twice the mechanical rate of fire in many cases only puts two or three bullets into a corpse when one was adequate.

Postwar study showed that during WW2 the American forces had to expend over 11,000 rounds of rifle calibre ammunition (this includes rifles, light machineguns (BARs) and medium machineguns (M1919s etc) for each casualty inflicted. It is probable that the same figures or close applied to Germans, Canadians, Brits, Japanese etc.

The point is that if this is accurate, then this "Beast" would have had to fire off some 22 million rounds to inflict 2000 casualties -and substantially more to inflict 2000 deaths!

Let is just say that this paragon of machine gunning was 5 times better than average. Then he would have fired only 4 million 400 thousand rounds that fateful day -or maybe he was TEN times better than average -then he needed 2.2 million rounds. If this were delivered in belts of 125 rounds -this would have taken 17,600 belts! I would have hated to be his #2 on that gun -I would have been busy indeed!

And then consider the massive pileup of bodies in front of his position! 2000 dead infantrymen makes a sizeable hill!

How many barrel changes did he have to make?

Does any one gun position HAVE that many barrels?

This whole thing is an excellent example of the "fog of war".

I suspect -with all due respect -that the best single gunner on the beach might possibly have killed 200 enemy soldiers.

This doesn't mean the "Beast" is or was a liar -it just means that he was deluded as to his personal success. He was not alone in fighting the US Army on that fateful fay in that fateful location -but he was not a one man army either.

If even 10 percent of all the machinegunners on Omaha on the German side equalled this man's claimed success they would have wiped out the entire invasion force.

As I remember -that is not the way it happened!

Sometimes you just have to do the math.

Jock Williams

Incidentally -I have fired a few thousand rounds through both of the main weapons mentioned -and a few thousand more through BARs and Brens and Thompsons, Stens, and Schmeissers. Fortunately the Queen was paying for the ammo! Equally fortunately -no one was shooting back at me!