Saving Private Ryan

As for a captain not landing in the first wave at Omaha, who can really say? We know that things got very mixed up very quickly on the run in, with boats from different waves surging ahead, or falling behind, not to mention landing on the wrong part of the beach. Whole boatloads got wiped out with no surviving witnesses. Who is to say that a capatin wasn't amongst the casualties?

Also, it's not clear from the film whether Miller's boat is actually one of the first ones to the beach. Certainly it looks like the first engaged by a certain machinegun, but we don't know whether the action had already begun elsewhere several minutes before.

The main inaccuracy with the landing scene is that the Americans are held up on the beach for about 15 minutes overall, instead of the hours that occured in history.

As to the SS time scale, again the film is not quite clear how many days have passed between the landing and Miller being given the mission. HQ's and supply dumps seem well established, and we know that Miller has been up country in the bocage charting minefields and so on.

Private Ryan refers to the dead Germans in the half tracks as "Recon, 2 SS". Well he could be wrong anyway, and we might be looking at the very advance guard of a division arriveing 5 or so days after the landing.

 

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Affentitten:
As to the SS time scale, again the film is not quite clear how many days have passed between the landing and Miller being given the mission. HQ's and supply dumps seem well established, and we know that Miller has been up country in the bocage charting minefields and so on.<hr></blockquote>

I think at the start of the scene in which it is a few days after the landing you are shown what day after the landing it is...D+3 etc..i forget what it says though...it is 2 or 3 i think. That is the day he gets his mission. Then from there it is easy to count the nights they spend up until the end of the movie...which i guess is 2 or 3.
Finally they show a date on the gravemarker in the end of th movie...but i never actually tried to see if it fit corectly to the time frame of the movie...but check out what i said...i think it's there!
wow that's alot of writting for something seeming so insignificant hehe oh well whatever

 

Officers up to the rank of Captain would have most certainly landed in the first wave. You are not going to send an infantry company into action without its leaders. Just look at the casualty figures for company grade officers through the war. As an example I'll use C Company 2nd Rangers. LCA418 contained Captain Goranson (Company Commander) and Lt Bill Moody's 1st Platoon. Lt Sid Salomon's 2nd platoon was in LCA1038. These men landed 9 minutes behind Company A of the 116th Infantry which was the assault element in this sector.

What is shown in the opening of SPR is very close to what happened to C Company. Of the 68 Rangers in C Company 19 were killed, 18 wounded. They were also among the first to reach the bluffs.

 

Lt. Col. Thorton Mullins lead the 111th field Artillery, 29th infantry Division on D-Day. They lost eleven of their twelve guns before thy even got to the beach. He is the one who said "TO HELL WITH OUR ARTILLERY MISSION, WE ARE INFANTRYMEN NOW"....He was killed in action, I think around 10:20 hours that night.....Oficers lead and inspire by example, and many thousands were killed LEADING men in battle....The Infantry school motto:...."FOLLOW ME"........When a Company goes into action, the Platoon leaders are Liutentints, and the Company Commander is a Captain. Several Companies of the 116th Regiment were in the first waves to hit Omaha, And I dont doubt for one mineut that thoses men were lead by their Officers. I dont know who started this rumor, that no Officers went in first, But im willing to bet it is a post war GI thing, and is not correct.....as far as Rangers are concerned, their were at least two Lt's and two sargents who are credited with helping to link up with the 116th and helped fight their way up behind Point-du-hoc, thus freeing up the 1st Division, who had been pinned down and had taken terrible cauasualties.One of those lt's was killed.

 

Walt, yes that does sound a bit far fetched. When the assault troops of the 3rd Can Inf Div landed on Juno, according to CSM Charlie Martin in his excellent book "Battle Diary" His unit. The Queen Own Rifles (and I was going to look up the exact wording, but I can't find the damn book grrr) The Battalian 2IC went in with the first wave [2 Companies] and the CO with the second wave. I doubt very much the Americans would have been much different. These troops trained as assault troops. The would have expected their officers there to lead the way.

 

You guys are so retarded. there are so many errors made in that film just to make a good drama.

For example
THe rangers did not land on any of the "Dog beaches" they went up Ponte Du hoc. They couldn't have landed on any of the Dog beaches I've been there and they are hell of far from Ponte Du Hoc.

Also notice the beach in i think the second scean. Where's all the junk on the beach?

Also after taking the beach there's this part where it shows the canrage of the battle, and there's a body floating notice the .50 cal ammo can it's a modern one and it's floating. Those things are friggen heavy when they are full.

Also except for 2 lost paratroopers that climbed Ponte du Hoc with the rangers (WWII magazine July 2001 pg 34 I suggest anyone that has a subscription read that article it's very interesting) the rangers never met up with any airborn troopers.

Finaly tell me what the heck is going on with the dog tags. The guys at the table going throught the dog tags. That would have been impossible. Do you know why? Because they would never take the dog tags off the body in the field. Never ever ever ever. That was done at the Graves registration center. and even then one tag would stay on the body permanently. The whole dog tag thing in movies got started by a john wayne movie.

Thank you.

If you noticed these errors too please email me at wipvi@attbi.com

William P.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I remember about the Tiger is the lack of interlocking wheels, been awhile since I seen SPR, but I remember walking out of the theater thinking "Damn, they had me until I saw that".

Wanted to watch it again this rememberance day, but can't find the copy I got for Xmas last year, probably packed away deep in a box...gotta find it!

 

As I understand, some of the 2nd Ranger battalion did land on Omaha in addition to their landing at Point Du Hoc. Guess I'll have to look that up agian to check.

Other than that, I pretty much did think the movie was a joke. Alot of the stuff is general stuff that all war movies are guilty of though - walking close to fit in the frame, huge, firey grenade explosions, etc. I'll never forget though, after that came out, interviewing vets and the movie always came up. Time and time again, they laughed and said there was no way they woulda gone on that mission. Nobody would have gone after one guy, no way no how.

Plus, one thing bugged me. I thought they had the beach scene down FAIRLY well, but one story I'm sure we've all heard is that besides junk, bodies, and fish, the beach was covered with cigarettes since everyone's packs were full of them after getting them at embarkation. Much better than the longest day, but still.....I guess all us jaded guys will have our good war movie some day.

 

Here's another one - can't take credit for it, it's included in the latest issue of 'After The Battle'.

The 'Rommel Stakes', angled with teller mines on top, are facing the wrong way !

Wartime diagrams and photos show them angled toward the beach - in the movie, they are clearly seen angled away from the beach.

 

last comment before I take a leave of abscence......

notice that US tropps are faced by W-SS troops backed by Tiger 1's. What's wrong with this scenario guys ? !

Only 2nd SS and 17th SS fought against US forces and neither one had the backing of the SS Schwere Panzer Abteilung's 101 or 102...

See Ya ! Ich Steige aus !

E

 

To think that no captains were amongst the first waves at normandy is crazy. Let me get this straight, Captains in the 82nd & 101st can jump out of a plane with their companies behind enemy lines but leg Captains aren't allowed to go ashore on normandy?

I can just see all these infantry companies sitting on the beaches, with no captains....looking back to sea, waiting for their commanders to arrive.

Hell, Brigadier General Roosevelt Jr. landed on Normandy in the first wave, & won the medal of honor. Unfortunatley, he had a heart attack & died a month later.

 

I doubt that your average US soldier was that dumb that he would sit on a beach waiting for his Coy commander. Actually I would have thought it made sense as there would still be pleanty of NCO's and platoon commanders to keep the men moving and once the focus of the enemy fire had changed from the water line to higher up then the Coy commanders could move in and take over.

 

Stefan,

Reenactors, might fight that way, but not real soldiers.
The whole point of being a company commander is to command your company, not let some NCO's do it while you wait in a nice safe spot. Yes, a company commander isn't going to man an OP or LP but he sure as hell is gonna be with his men in any sort of major attack.

Remember were talking captains,..they weren't exactly that hard to replace if one got killed.

 

Ohh, a jibe against re-enactors now, lol. We dont fight that way and actually I dont base any tactical knowledge on re-enactment, that would be stupid. All I said was that it would make tactical sense though obviously it would depend when the second wave landed. Frankly I dont care. By the way, you never did answer my question as to what military you served in (you mentioned it earlier IMS), I am not doubting ur tactical knowledge just always curious about who ex soldiers served with.

 

LOL!!

I'm a reenanctor myself, though I don't have time to participate much anymore.

I served in the U.S. army.

 

Cool, when may I ask? Also what did you/do you reenact? I hope you dont mind me asking, I am just curious. I am with a 12th SS unit but obviously am too young to be in the forces, I plan on joining and am a cadet CSM at the moment (so the highest of the lowest of the lowest of the low )

 

Well, any way or another the fil is great. The realism is one thing it has to be credited with. You can actually see in the face of the German soldiers that they are battle-hardened and they look monstrous! They look like if they had been killing many Russians for three years!

Also, I have just downloaded the soundtrack by John Williams. Oh God! It's amazingly beautiful!

 

Why do you complain about?! you LOVED this:

 

Ah - that's Tom Hanks shooting at a T-34...