Im looking now for reports, books and eyewitnesses (especially those from naval observers) about the naval support on D-day and after.
Ofcourse the question: how effective were those bombardments.
had just one passage from the memoirs from Werner Kortenhaus, a tank commander in No 4 Company.
that day (june 9) for us was one of the hardest actions ever. We assembled with about ten tanks under the trees of the avenue south of Escoville. We drove with closed ports, one tank after the other, to the right past the chateau into a large meadow, which was enclosed by hedges. There we intended switching to broad wedge formation for attack, the grenadiers behind and alongside us.
Then everything happened very quickly: within a few minutes we had lost four tanks, knocked out by naval guns. On my tank (a Mk IV with the short barrel) the turret jammed, so that I could only shoot into the hedges with my machine gun. The fire became more intense, so that on orders from Major von Luck we had to withdraw, as did the grenadiers.
The artillery fire continued unabated. Some 30 or 40 grenadiers must have been killed by it.