Allied Navy Support for Operation Overloard

The following is a list of ships participating in the Navy assault at Omaha beach sectors.

If you have seen images of WN65, Easy Red Beach, 8" and larger guns are too large a charge to create the footprint at the top of the pillbox. What size gun is a likely candidate to create the missing chunk of concrete seen today? I am attempting to ascertain this in determining which Navy ship created the crater seen today. I am researching the ship and the time this occurred.
Only those supporting the 1st Infantry at Easy Red Sector applies and that is part of the quandary.

Regards,

See link for WN65:
http://www.visiblepast.net/gwiki/index.php?title=Image:WN65_2.JPG



FIRE SUPPORT GROUP – Force "O"
Under command of Rear-Admiral Carleton F. BRYANT
USS Augusta (CA-31) 9 x 8" guns, 8 x 5" guns
USS Arkansas (BB-33) 12 x 12" guns, 10 x 3" guns (support 1st Inf Div)
USS Texas (BB-35) 10 x 14" guns, 6 x 5" guns, 10 x 3" guns (support 29th Inf Div)
HMS Bellona 8 x 5 ¼" guns, 12 x 2pdr guns
HMS Glasgow 12 x 6" guns, 8 x 4" guns (support 29th Inf Div)
FNFL Georges Leygues 9 x 6" guns, 8 x 3 ½" guns (support 1st Inf Div)
FNFL Montcalm 9 x 6" guns, 8 x 3 ½" guns (support 1st Inf Div)

+ Destroyers USS Baldwin (DD-624), Carmick (DD-493), Doyle (DD-494), Emmons (DD-457), Frankford (DD-497), Harding (DD-625), McCook (DD-496), Satterlee (DD-626), Thompson (DD-627) ... , and HMS Melbreak, HMS Talybont, HMS Tanatside ...

 

Take a look at the possibility of the result of a penetration by AP rounds . The crater characteristics are somewhat different than surface bursts by HE.

I'm also curious about how long the concrete had cured on the individual bunkers. Used to work for a engineering company & learned along the way how concrete graduallly build its strength over many weeks or months. how fast & how strong depends on the mix or formula of the individual pour or mass. The failure of concrete only hardened three or four months would be far worse that that which had set eight or ten months.

 

Thanks for your post.

Based on my information the concrete bunker was completed April '44. Duration of construction unknown. It is possible construction commenced Jan. 1944. Also, outer concrete walls no less than 2.0 meters thick and not more than 3.5 meters thick.

Also, I've linked to images I took in 2007. What would you say is the tragectory (left, right or top) of an assumed Naval round?

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/2917/samplebtop.jpg

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/790/sampleafront.jpg

What are your thoughts?

Here's someone else's thought:

Just to provide a SWAG, only a 12 or 14 is likely to make that much scattered damge along with the intial "hole," based on things I've seen on Guam, Saipan and Okinawa back in the day. As an old gunner's mate, I cannot imagine an 8" or 6" being able to expand the damaged area as much as the photo shows. It would take some real shards of metal for that. I would bet on Texas or Arkansas.

 

What's fnfl French?

 

That would be French Navy vessel.