Is This Alleged D-Day Footage Authentic?

[CWO Marc]

I just came across this video clip…

http://abcnews.go.com/US/video/d-day-color-footage-24012510

…which purports to be colour footage of “U.S. forces storming Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.”  Frankly, I’m sceptical, mainly because these guys don’t seem to be “storming” anything: they’re strolling about quite casually or marching in neat columns, and nobody seems to be shooting at them.  The real Omaha Beach was a bloody shambles from the first minute.  This looks more like a training exercise – and not a particularly rigourous one at that.  The landing craft looks odd too; it’s definitely not a Higgins boat, but it may be a type with which I’m not familiar.  I’m also puzzled by those shiny things on the backpacks (or life jackets) of the troops: if I didn’t know the alleged context of the video, I’d have said that they look like patches of Scotchlite retro-reflector tape (which as far as I know didn’t exist in 1944).  Opinions?

[Witt]

If that is storming….most definitely strolling.
I am one phone(and blind), so could not even make out if they were Americans. I am guessing you could see that at least. But if a con to call it what thy have done. They are not being shot at, so could be an exercise(a poor one) or a second wave at Utah.

Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

[CWO Marc]

@wittmann:

or a second wave at Utah.

That was my thought too until I noticed that the beach looked almost pristine: there’s hardly anyone or anything around.  If this was the real Omaha Beach, it should be littered with dead bodies and wrecked equipment and the sand should be all messed up: footsteps, jeep tracks, shell holes and so forth.  Utah Beach, as you suggest, would be more credible, since there wasn’t the same level of carnage there…but even then, we should be seeing piles of supplies stacked all over the place if this was a second-wave landing, since getting stuff ashore to support the initial lodgment was very important.  The guys in this movie seems to be heading out for a weekend at Brighton Pier rather that invading Fortress Europe.  If the ground component of the First Gulf War had been conducted at that tempo, it would have been called Operation Desert Stroll.

[John Brown]

It doesn’t look like anybody is in a hurry, so I don’t know what to make of it, to be honest.

[axisandalliesplayer]

It looks like a training exercise to me. I guess it could be a follow-on wave of troops landing on a section of beach that hasn’t really been touched since we don’t see a wide shot of the beach in question, just a smaller subsection of it. But to me it doesn’t appear to be thing it’s purported to be for the reasons listed above. Still a good find though.

[Toucan-son-of-sam]

I randomly came across this thread tonight… and then 2 min later I randomly came across another D-day related thread; about Excercise Tiger.
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/8603/code-named-exercise-tiger-and-it-s-place-in-history-with-d-day

I don’t know why, but I think this video may have been taken at Slapton Sands The hills and terrain look VERY similar.

In fact look at the hill in the background of this photo from the Excercise Tiger wikipedia photo. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/D-Day_rehearsal_cph.3c32795.jpg

Sure looks ALOT like the hill in the video.

[Toucan-son-of-sam]

As for the landing craft…

I would say the landing craft in this photo (Allegedly taken during the slapton sands training excercise) looks ALOT if not EXACTLY like the landing craft in the video.

Found the photo in this article
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/475351/The-tragedy-of-Slapton-Sands-The-real-story-of-that-terrible-night

[aequitas-et-veritas]

@CWO-Marc you may want to double check the boats name/number.
As far as i can see it says lct 15230 or something like that.
Do the US have archives on what, when and who for WWII?
Did they record anything?
This would be my first thing to go after.

[CWO Marc]

@aequitas-et-veritas said in Is This Alleged D-Day Footage Authentic?:

@CWO-Marc you may want to double check the boats name/number.
As far as i can see it says lct 15230 or something like that.
Do the US have archives on what, when and who for WWII?
Did they record anything?
This would be my first thing to go after.

A good place to start when doing archival research into this sort of thing would be the US Navy’s Naval History and Heritage Command, which used to be called the Naval Historical Center. I’ve had a quick look (it’s all I have time for) at their website, and it turns out they have a page on Exercise Tiger…

https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-and-operations/world-war-ii/1944/exercise-tiger.html

…which you might want to look at. I haven’t read it, but it has a few photos plus lots of footnoted sources.

[CWO Marc]

The link came out strange in my above post; here’s another try:

https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-and-operations/world-war-ii/1944/exercise-tiger.html#

[aequitas-et-veritas]

@CWO-Marc thank you for your quick response.

[aequitas-et-veritas]

@CWO-Marc the impression i have is, that it might be the last Training before the actual D-day.
Because the date says 05 of June.
This might be the actual footage of the previous day before D-day and has the opener or title of :
Storming the beach on Omaha.
Not knowing how they really will end up, though.

[CWO Marc]

@aequitas-et-veritas said in Is This Alleged D-Day Footage Authentic?:

@CWO-Marc the impression i have is, that it might be the last Training before the actual D-day.
Because the date says 05 of June.

If the footage (which I haven’t looked at) says that this is a training maneuver conducted on June 5 in preparation for the D-Day invasion, then the information isn’t accurate for a couple of reasons. First, the troops didn’t conduct intensive training exercises right up to the last day; the days prior to the invasion (I think it was a period of about one week) were devoted to moving the troops from the camps where they had been living to the assembly areas for the invasion, loading them aboard their transports, and giving the “sealed” troops (no disembarkation allowed) their final briefings, including (in some cases) restricted information about the identity of the actual targets they would be assaulting. (A typical reaction from the troops was: “Ah, now I see what they were training us for. Those cliffs (or whatever) in Normandy look exactly like the ones in England on which we practiced.”) Second, it’s impossible for major training exercises (like an amphibious landing) to have been scheduled for June 5th because June 5th was the date on which the actual invasion was supposed to take place; it was delayed until June 6th at the last minute – some of the ships had already left for Normandy, and had to be recalled – because of unexpected bad weather.

[Caesar-Seriona]

The only conclusion I can get from this is that if this is at D-day, then this is either a second or third wave after the beach is declared a green zone. Even if this is training, they would still drill it as if in combat.

[CWO Marc]

Another detail that could be checked by someone who has expertise in landing craft design (I don’t know the subject well enough) would be to see if the craft used in the footage are of the correct vintage. It’s been noted that the landing craft used in the early-1960s D-Day movie The Longest Day are the models which the US Navy was using at the time the movie was made, not the ones which were used in WWII.

[taamvan]

@CWO-Marc The vast majority of vintage “combat” photographs and videos are staged or reenacted. The ones that aren’t are often blurry and ill-composed because the photographer was being shot at.

I wouldn’t really expect them to show battle with actual bullets flying until the gopro era