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Omaha Beach: The Complete D-Day Visitor Guide for 2026

Omaha Beach is the most famous of the five D-Day landing beaches — an 8-kilometre stretch of the Calvados coast in Normandy, France, where the American 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions came ashore on 6 June 1944 and fought the bloodiest, most desperate battle of the entire invasion. From the Portsmouth to Caen ferry terminal at Ouistreham, Omaha Beach is around 74km west — roughly 1 hour 15 minutes by car — making it a natural full-day trip alongside the Normandy American Cemetery, Bayeux and Pointe du Hoc.

D-Day at Omaha Beach very nearly failed. Rough seas swamped the amphibious tanks meant to support the infantry, the pre-landing bombardment missed most of its targets, and an experienced German division had — unknown to Allied intelligence — moved into the sector just weeks earlier. The result was the highest casualty toll of any beach on D-Day, and a battle so costly that the beach earned a nickname that has stuck for eighty years: “Bloody Omaha.” Yet by nightfall, American troops had fought their way up the bluffs and secured a foothold that held.

This complete guide to Omaha Beach Normandy D-Day covers everything you need to plan your 2026 visit: the full story of Omaha Beach 1944 and the D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach, which regiments landed and where, the casualty figures and what they really tell us, and a thorough guide to what Omaha Beach today actually looks like and every significant site to visit — from the Normandy American Cemetery and the Les Braves sculpture to the Omaha Beach Memorial Museum, the Overlord Museum and the German strongpoint at WN62.

Last updated: July 2026 | Omaha Beach D-Day facts verified from the American Battle Monuments Commission, the National WWII Museum, the CWGC, Britannica and primary sources. Admission prices verified from official museum sources.

Omaha Beach Day Trip. 2nd Infantry Division, Easy Red Sector June 7 1944

US Army Signal Corps, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Omaha Beach — Key Facts for 2026

64km from Caen · 74km from the Ouistreham ferry port · H-Hour 06:30, 6 June 1944 · US 1st & 29th Infantry Divisions · ~34,000 troops landed · ~2,400 American casualties — the costliest D-Day beach

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🇺🇸 Omaha Beach at a Glance

64km
From Caen — approximately 1 hour by car on the N13
FREE
Beach, Normandy American Cemetery & Les Braves
06:30
H-Hour, 6 June 1944 — first wave of the 1st & 29th Divisions
34,000
American troops landed on Omaha Beach by the end of 6 June 1944
  • ✅Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer — 9,389 graves on a bluff directly above the beach. Free entry, one of the most visited D-Day sites in France
  • ✅Les Braves, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer — the striking steel sculpture on the beach itself, installed for the 60th anniversary in 2004. Free, always visible
  • ✅Omaha Beach Memorial Museum, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer — 200m from the beach. €7.80 adults, €4.60 children 7–15
  • ✅Overlord Museum, Colleville-sur-Mer — 10,000+ artefacts and 40 vehicles and tanks, 500m from the cemetery
  • ✅WN62 German strongpoint, Colleville — the best-preserved bunker complex overlooking the beach, free and always accessible
  • ✅Dog friendly on the beach — dogs are welcome on Omaha Beach itself, but are not permitted inside the Normandy American Cemetery except registered service animals (see FAQs below)
  • ⚠️Car essential. Public transport is very limited — a car (or organised tour) is by far the easiest way to see Omaha Beach’s scattered sites in one visit

What Happened at Omaha Beach on D-Day

The D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach was the responsibility of the US V Corps (Major General Leonard T. Gerow), part of Lieutenant General Omar Bradley’s US First Army. At H-Hour, 06:30 on the morning of 6 June 1944 — an hour ahead of the British and Canadian landings further east — the American 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions hit the beach. What followed became, by common agreement among historians, the hardest-fought and costliest few hours of the entire Normandy campaign.

06:30: Landing Into a Killing Ground

Everything that could go wrong at Omaha Beach on D-Day did. The pre-landing naval and aerial bombardment, hampered by low cloud, largely overshot the German defences along the bluffs. Rough seas swamped 27 of the 29 DD (Duplex Drive) amphibious tanks of the 741st Tank Battalion before they even reached the shore — the infantry landed with almost no armoured support. Worse, Allied intelligence had missed a crucial development: the experienced German 352nd Infantry Division had moved into the sector in March 1944 to reinforce the static 716th Division, doubling the strength of the defenders without the Allies knowing. From fortified positions in the bluffs — a network of concrete casemates, trenches and machine-gun nests known as Widerstandsnester, numbered WN-60 to WN-74 — German troops had a clear, elevated field of fire onto the open beach below.

Companies of the 116th Infantry Regiment (29th Division) and 16th Infantry Regiment (1st Division) were cut down as their landing craft ramps dropped, some losing the majority of their men within minutes. Combat engineers tasked with blowing gaps in the beach obstacles took catastrophic casualties working under direct fire. By mid-morning, the situation was so dire that General Bradley, watching from the command ship USS Augusta, seriously considered abandoning the landing and diverting follow-on forces to Gold Beach. It remains the closest any D-Day beach came to outright failure.

Breaking the Bluffs: The Battle Turns

The Omaha Beach landing was ultimately saved not by the original plan but by small groups of soldiers, officers and non-commissioned officers improvising under fire. At the Vierville draw, Brigadier General Norman Cota — assistant commander of the 29th Division — personally led men off the beach and up the bluffs, reportedly telling them “Rangers, lead the way!”, which later became the motto of the US Army Rangers. Individual squads and platoons, cut off from their units and often leaderless, found gaps in the wire and worked their way up the bluffs in small, isolated groups rather than through any coordinated assault. Naval destroyers moved dangerously close to shore to fire directly on German strongpoints, at real risk of running aground, and their point-blank gunfire proved decisive in silencing several positions that had pinned the infantry down for hours. The battleship USS Texas — designated flagship of the Omaha bombardment force — spent the morning firing 255 shells at the German battery atop Pointe du Hoc in support of the Ranger assault there, before shifting her main guns onto the German positions defending the Vierville draw itself.

By late morning, the German defence began to fracture as position after position was outflanked from above. The beach exits — the “draws” at Vierville, Les Moulins, Saint-Laurent and Colleville — were fought open one by one through the afternoon, allowing tanks, artillery and reinforcements to finally move inland. By nightfall on 6 June, American troops held a beachhead roughly 1.5 to 2 kilometres deep along most of the front — far short of the day’s objectives, but secure. Approximately 34,000 men had come ashore at Omaha alone.

⚔️ Why “Bloody Omaha”?

Of the roughly 2,400 American casualties suffered at Omaha Beach on D-Day, the great majority fell in the first two hours, concentrated on a handful of beach sectors — Dog Green in particular, opposite Vierville-sur-Mer, where entire companies were decimated in minutes. It was, proportionally, the costliest landing of D-Day by a wide margin, and the nickname “Bloody Omaha” was already in use among war correspondents within days of the battle. The name has endured for eighty years as shorthand for just how close the invasion’s American sector came to disaster.

🎗️ The Bedford Boys

Company A of the 116th Infantry Regiment was raised largely from the small town of Bedford, Virginia — population under 4,000 in 1944. Landing in the first wave opposite Dog Green sector, the company was virtually wiped out within the first few minutes; Bedford alone lost 19 men that morning, the highest per-capita D-Day loss of any American community. Bedford was later chosen as the site of the National D-Day Memorial in recognition of that sacrifice.

🐢 Charles Shay and the Native American Soldiers

Among the first wave at Omaha was Private Charles Shay, a 19-year-old Penobscot combat medic with the 16th Infantry Regiment, who repeatedly waded back into the surf under fire to pull wounded and drowning soldiers to safety, earning the Silver Star. He was one of roughly 175 Native American soldiers who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. Shay returned to Normandy almost every year until his death in December 2025, aged 101, and a memorial park bearing his name now overlooks the beach at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer.

Who Landed on Omaha Beach? The Regiments

The assault on Omaha Beach was carried out by two US Army infantry divisions under V Corps, part of the US First Army commanded by Lieutenant General Omar Bradley — the overall American ground forces commander for D-Day.

🇺🇸 1st Infantry Division — “The Big Red One”

Command: Major General Clarence R. Huebner. A combat-hardened division, having already fought in North Africa and Sicily.

Assault regiments (Easy Red & Fox Green sectors):

  • 16th Infantry Regiment — first wave, Easy Red and Fox Green
  • 18th Infantry Regiment — follow-on wave
  • 26th Infantry Regiment — reserve

Combat medic Private Charles Shay landed with the 16th Infantry Regiment’s Fox Company in the first wave.

🇺🇸 29th Infantry Division — National Guard “Blue and Gray”

Command: Major General Charles H. Gerhardt. A National Guard division, landing in combat for the first time on D-Day.

Assault regiment (Dog Green, White & Red, Charlie sectors):

  • 116th Infantry Regiment — first wave, including Company A of Bedford, Virginia
  • 115th Infantry Regiment — follow-on wave
  • 175th Infantry Regiment — reserve

Attached: 2nd & 5th Ranger Battalions (Dog Green and the Vierville draw, alongside the separate assault on Pointe du Hoc) | 741st & 743rd Tank Battalions (DD and standard Sherman tanks) | 5th & 6th Engineer Special Brigades

The German Defenders at Omaha Beach

Omaha was defended chiefly by the 352nd Infantry Division under Generalleutnant Dietrich Kraiss — a full-strength, well-trained formation that Field Marshal Rommel had ordered forward to the coast in March 1944, reinforcing two battalions of the 726th Grenadier Regiment (part of the static 716th Infantry Division) already dug in along the bluffs. Allied intelligence never detected the 352nd’s move, which meant the Americans landed expecting roughly half the defensive strength they actually faced. Fifteen fortified strongpoints, or Widerstandsnester, were sited to cover the beach exits and draws with interlocking machine-gun and artillery fire, supported by more than 60 light artillery pieces and 18 anti-tank guns dug into casemates and pillboxes along the bluffs.

What to See at Omaha Beach Today

Omaha Beach France today combines one of the most solemn sites in Europe with an unusually rich cluster of museums and preserved bunkers from the Battle of Normandy. Omaha Beach 1944 left a deeper physical trace here than almost anywhere else on the D-Day coast — with three separate Omaha Beach museum options alone, plus the bunkers on Omaha Beach itself still standing on the bluffs, these are the key places to visit, in order of priority.

🇺🇸 Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer

Set on a bluff directly above Omaha Beach, the Normandy American Cemetery is the largest American Second World War cemetery in Europe and one of the most visited D-Day sites in France, drawing more than a million visitors a year. Across 172.5 acres lie 9,389 graves, most of them men killed during the D-Day landings and the Normandy campaign that followed, alongside the Walls of the Missing, inscribed with 1,557 names of servicemen never recovered. At the centre of the memorial stands the bronze statue “Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves” by Donald De Lue. The cemetery faces west, back toward the United States. A flag-lowering ceremony is held daily, one hour before closing.

Among those buried here are Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., son of President Theodore Roosevelt and a Medal of Honor recipient for his actions at Utah Beach, and brothers Robert and Preston Niland, whose story — alongside their brother Fritz — was the real-life inspiration for the film Saving Private Ryan. Their graves, along with those of 45 other pairs of brothers buried in the cemetery, are among the most visited individual markers on the site.

Admission: Free, including the visitor centre. Hours: 9am–6pm from mid-April to mid-September, 9am–5pm the rest of the year; closed 25 December and 1 January. Note for 2026: the American Battle Monuments Commission has announced a pre-registration system for the cemetery, though as of mid-2026 the rollout has been pushed back — most recent guidance points to registration opening toward the end of 2026 for visits from summer 2027 onward. Check abmc.gov before travelling for the current requirement. Address: Colleville-sur-Mer, signposted from the D514.

🕊️ Les Braves, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer

The single most photographed memorial at Omaha Beach is Les Braves — three towering, wing-like stainless steel sculptures standing directly on the sand at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, installed in 2004 for the 60th anniversary of D-Day and created by the French sculptor Anilore Banon. The three elements represent “The Wings of Hope,” “Rise, Freedom!” and “The Wings of Fraternity.” Unlike almost every other D-Day memorial, Les Braves sits directly on the beach itself, at the water’s edge, exactly where the fighting happened — a deliberate choice by the artist to place remembrance in the landscape rather than above it. A twin sculpture, Les Braves II: At Water’s Edge, was later installed in Michigan, USA, to mark the connection between the two nations.

Visiting: Free, outdoors, accessible at any time. Best seen at low tide, when the full beach is exposed around it.

🏛️ Omaha Beach Memorial Museum, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer

Just 200m from the beach and a five-minute walk from Les Braves, this long-established museum uses dioramas, personal artefacts, vehicles and a 25-minute documentary film to trace events from the German occupation through to the landings. Admission: €7.80 adults, €4.60 children 7–15. Hours vary seasonally — roughly 9:30am–7pm in summer, shorter in shoulder months, generally closed from early November to mid-February. Check the museum’s current hours before travelling.

🎖️ Overlord Museum, Colleville-sur-Mer

Located 500m from the Normandy American Cemetery, this is the largest private WWII collection in Normandy — more than 10,000 items and over 40 vehicles, tanks and artillery pieces, including a rare Panther tank, displayed in life-size battlefield reconstructions covering all six armies present in Normandy. Opened in 2013 from the private collection of local Norman collector Michel Leloup. Admission: adult tickets are typically in the low-to-mid teens in euros; check overlordmuseum.com for the current price before travelling. Hours: roughly 10am–5:30pm in winter months, extending to 9:30am–7pm in June–August.

🏰 WN62 German Strongpoint, Colleville

Of all the surviving bunkers on Omaha Beach, WN62 is the best-preserved of the fifteen Widerstandsnester that defended the coast, sitting on the bluff almost directly below the Normandy American Cemetery and overlooking Easy Red and Fox Green sectors. From inside the original German trenches and gun positions, the field of fire down onto the beach — and the near-impossible task facing the American infantry below — becomes immediately clear. Free, open access, a short walk from the cemetery car park. Two further strongpoints are also worth seeking out if you have time: WN60, the easternmost position on the bluff above Fox Green, and WN65 near Les Braves above Saint-Laurent, a concrete casemate that housed a 50mm anti-tank gun and briefly served as the first American headquarters on the beach.

🐢 Charles Shay Indian Memorial, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer

A small park on the dunes overlooking the beach, centred on a granite turtle sculpture, honours the roughly 175 Native American soldiers who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day — and Charles Shay in particular, the Penobscot medic who saved numerous lives here and became a familiar figure at Normandy’s annual D-Day commemorations until his death in December 2025. Free, open access, near Les Braves.

🏛️ D-Day Omaha Museum, Vierville-sur-Mer

A distinct, family-run museum at the western end of Omaha Beach — not to be confused with the Omaha Beach Memorial Museum in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer. Built around a large private collection of vehicles, weapons and personal effects gathered over decades, it focuses on the western end of the landings around Vierville and the Dog Green sector. Address: Route de Grandcamp, Vierville-sur-Mer. Check dday-omaha.fr for current admission and hours before travelling.

🎖️ National Guard Memorial, Vierville-sur-Mer

A monument at the Vierville beach exit honouring the National Guard units of the 29th Infantry Division — the “Blue and Gray” division was a peacetime National Guard formation before D-Day, and this memorial specifically recognises that citizen-soldier heritage, distinct from the wider 29th Division story told elsewhere on the beach. Free, open access, near the Dog Green sector draw.

Getting to Omaha Beach from Caen

Omaha Beach is further from Caen and the ferry port than the British and Canadian beaches, and public transport options are limited — a car makes the visit far easier.

🚗 From Caen or the Ferry Port — 64–74km, ~1 to 1.25 Hours

By car from Caen: Take the N13 west toward Bayeux and Formigny, then the D517 and D514 to Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer or Colleville-sur-Mer — approximately 64km, around an hour, toll-free.

From the ferry port at Ouistreham: Continue on the N13 past Caen — approximately 74km, 1 hour 15 minutes. Free parking is available at the Normandy American Cemetery and along the seafront at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer.

🚂 Via Bayeux — No Car Option

Train Caen → Bayeux: Approximately 20 minutes, frequent service. From Bayeux, Nomad bus line 120 runs toward the Normandy American Cemetery and Omaha Beach area, though services are infrequent — check nomad-normandie.fr and plan around the timetable carefully.

Guided tours departing from Bayeux or Caen are a genuinely practical alternative if you don’t have a car — Omaha Beach’s sites are spread out enough that a tour or taxi is far more reliable than public transport alone.

Combine with Bayeux and Pointe du Hoc

Omaha Beach sits almost exactly between Bayeux (17km east) and Pointe du Hoc (10.5km west) — the site of the Ranger assault that took place alongside the Omaha landings on D-Day morning. Most visitors combine the three in a single day: Bayeux for the cathedral, war cemetery and Battle of Normandy museum; Omaha Beach and the Normandy American Cemetery at the centre; and Pointe du Hoc’s cratered clifftop battlefield to finish. All connected by the D514, toll-free.

Sample Day: Omaha Beach from Caen

Given the distance from Caen, most visitors treat Omaha Beach as a full day out rather than a quick stop — here are two ways to plan it.

The Essential Half-Day — Cemetery, Les Braves & the Beach

Perfect for: Visitors short on time who want the core Omaha Beach experience.

  • 10:00: Drive to Colleville-sur-Mer from Caen (~1 hour)
  • 11:00: Normandy American Cemetery — allow 1.5–2 hours (free)
  • 13:00: WN62 bunker, a short walk from the cemetery (free, 20 minutes)
  • 13:30: Lunch in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer or Colleville-sur-Mer
  • 14:30: Les Braves and the beach at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer (free, 30–45 minutes)
  • 15:15: Return to Caen (~1 hour)

Full American D-Day Day — Cemetery, Museums, Bayeux & Pointe du Hoc

Perfect for: A complete day covering the American D-Day sector in full — best done as an early start.

  • 09:00: Depart Caen, drive to Bayeux (~25 min) — Cathedral and old town (1 hour)
  • 10:30: Drive to Colleville-sur-Mer (~20 min) — Normandy American Cemetery (1.5–2 hours, free)
  • 12:45: Overlord Museum, 500m from the cemetery (allow 1.5 hours)
  • 14:30: Lunch in Colleville-sur-Mer or Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer
  • 15:15: Les Braves, the beach and Omaha Beach Memorial Museum, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer (allow 1.5 hours)
  • 17:00: Drive to Pointe du Hoc (10.5km, 20 min) — cratered battlefield and Ranger memorial (45 minutes, free)
  • 18:15: Return to Caen via Bayeux (~1 hour)

Top Tips for Visiting Omaha Beach

  • Check the Normandy American Cemetery registration rules before you travel: A pre-registration system has been announced but its rollout has shifted through 2026 — confirm the current requirement at abmc.gov shortly before your visit, especially if travelling around the 6 June anniversary period, when the cemetery is at its busiest.
  • Bringing a dog? Omaha Beach itself is dog friendly and popular with local dog walkers, but dogs (other than registered service animals) are not permitted anywhere inside the Normandy American Cemetery grounds. Plan to leave dogs at your accommodation, or split the visit between someone walking the beach and someone visiting the cemetery.
  • Visit the cemetery before the beach, not after: Most visitors find the Normandy American Cemetery far more powerful once they’ve understood the story of the landing below it — the WN62 bunker in particular makes the connection between the two immediate and visceral.
  • Low tide reveals the most: At low tide, Omaha Beach becomes very wide and flat — much closer to how it looked to the men who had to cross it under fire on D-Day morning. Check tide times before you travel.
  • Treat the casualty figures with care: The often-quoted figure of around 2,400 American casualties at Omaha on D-Day comes from the official V Corps history, but the US Army’s own historians have long acknowledged that exact unit-by-unit figures were never fully reconciled — treat any single precise number with appropriate caution, and expect slightly different figures across sources.
  • Combine with Pointe du Hoc and La Cambe German War Cemetery: Pointe du Hoc (10.5km west) tells the story of the Ranger assault that ran alongside the Omaha landing, while La Cambe German War Cemetery, a short drive further west, offers a sobering and rarely crowded counterpoint — well worth the detour for a fuller picture of the battle.
  • Allow more time than you think: Omaha Beach’s sites are spread across several villages rather than clustered in one place, unlike Sword or Juno — budget a full day if you want to see the cemetery, both main museums, WN62 and the beach itself without rushing.

Omaha Beach: Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Omaha Beach? Where was Omaha Beach located?

Omaha Beach is in Normandy, France, in the Calvados department, stretching roughly 8km along the coast from west of Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes to Vierville-sur-Mer, taking in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer and Colleville-sur-Mer. It sits between Utah Beach (American, to the west) and Gold Beach (British, to the east), and is approximately 64km from Caen and 74km from the Portsmouth to Caen ferry terminal at Ouistreham. The nearest town with a train station is Bayeux, around 17km away.

What was Omaha Beach called before the war?

Before the war, this stretch of Normandy coastline was known locally as the Côte d’Or, or “Golden Coast,” after the colour of its sand. During the planning of D-Day the sector was first given the operational codename “X-Ray,” which was changed to “Omaha” on 3 March 1944. The name is generally believed to have been chosen by General Omar Bradley, after the hometown of a soldier on his staff — it was not named after any general or officer, and carried no symbolic meaning beyond wartime security.

What happened during the D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach?

At H-Hour, 06:30 on 6 June 1944, the American 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions landed at Omaha Beach as part of the wider Normandy landings. Rough seas swamped most of the supporting DD tanks before they reached shore, the pre-landing bombardment largely missed its targets, and an undetected German division had reinforced the bluffs weeks earlier — together making Omaha the deadliest of the five D-Day beaches. Small groups of soldiers, without most of their officers, fought their way up the bluffs through the morning and early afternoon, eventually opening the beach exits and securing a shallow foothold by nightfall. Roughly 34,000 American troops came ashore at Omaha on D-Day.

How many died on Omaha Beach on D-Day? How many were killed?

The most widely cited figure is around 2,400 total American casualties (killed, wounded and missing) at Omaha Beach on D-Day, drawn from the official V Corps history (2,374: 1,190 from the 1st Division, 743 from the 29th Division, 441 from corps troops). Of those, historians estimate roughly 700–800 were killed outright on 6 June itself — the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cites approximately 770. The US Army’s own official historians have noted that exact unit-by-unit figures for D-Day losses were never fully reconciled and likely never will be, so treat any single precise number with some caution. Whatever the exact figure, Omaha’s casualties were by far the highest of any D-Day beach.

Why is Omaha Beach called “Bloody Omaha”?

“Bloody Omaha” became shorthand — in use among war correspondents within days of the battle — for the scale of the casualties suffered here compared with the other D-Day beaches, and for how close the landing came to failing outright. Much of the toll was concentrated in the first two hours and in specific sectors, particularly Dog Green opposite Vierville-sur-Mer, where entire assault companies, including Company A of the 116th Infantry (the “Bedford Boys” of Bedford, Virginia), suffered devastating losses within minutes of landing.

Are dogs allowed on Omaha Beach?

Yes — Omaha Beach itself is dog friendly, and it’s common to see dogs walked along the sand, particularly out of season. However, dogs are not permitted inside the Normandy American Cemetery grounds under any circumstances, other than registered service animals assisting visitors with disabilities. If you’re travelling with a dog, plan to visit the cemetery separately or take turns, since the beach and the cemetery have different rules.

What is the Normandy American Cemetery?

The Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer is the largest American Second World War cemetery in Europe, containing 9,389 graves and a Wall of the Missing bearing 1,557 names, set on 172.5 acres directly above Omaha Beach. Dedicated in 1956 and maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission, it is free to visit and receives more than a million visitors a year, making it one of the most-visited D-Day sites in Normandy. A visitor centre, opened in 2007, provides historical context through exhibits, film and personal soldier stories.

Who landed on Omaha Beach?

Omaha Beach was assaulted by the US 1st Infantry Division (“The Big Red One,” Major General Clarence R. Huebner) and the 29th Infantry Division (Major General Charles H. Gerhardt), under US V Corps within Lieutenant General Omar Bradley’s First Army. The 16th Infantry Regiment and 116th Infantry Regiment led the first wave, supported by the 2nd and 5th Ranger Battalions and the 741st and 743rd Tank Battalions. They faced Germany’s 352nd Infantry Division, reinforced by elements of the 716th Infantry Division, dug into fortified positions along the bluffs above the beach.

Continue Planning Your Normandy D-Day Visit

🏖️

All D-Day Beaches

Complete hub covering all five D-Day landing beaches — Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword — with distances from Caen and our interactive map

D-Day Beaches Hub →

⚓

Gold Beach

The neighbouring British beach to the east — the Mulberry Harbour remains at Arromanches and the only Victoria Cross of D-Day

Gold Beach →

🎖️

Pointe du Hoc

The Ranger assault that ran alongside the Omaha landing — a cratered clifftop battlefield 10.5km west, still exactly as the fighting left it

Pointe du Hoc →

🏛️

Mémorial de Caen

The world’s finest D-Day museum — visit before the beaches for essential context on what happened and why. In Caen itself, 64km from Omaha

Mémorial de Caen →

Visit Omaha Beach — Travel via Portsmouth to Caen

Brittany Ferries sails year-round from Portsmouth to Caen (Ouistreham). From the ferry terminal, Omaha Beach and the Normandy American Cemetery are approximately 1 hour 15 minutes by car — a full day well spent alongside Bayeux and Pointe du Hoc.

Check Prices & Book Portsmouth to Caen →