Patton's assessment of Omar Bradley is starting to look more and more accurate. Bradley and his cohorts badly underestimated several aspects of needed resources for the invasion of Omaha Beach. Failure to look to the Pacific campaign for the "been there and done that" on-the-job experience learned by the Navy and Marines, resulted in higher casualties than necessary. Throw in poor communication between the Army, Navy, and the Army Air Corps, and you have the makings of a near disaster. Lewis should be commended for his homework and thoughtful analysis, however this book reads like a long memorandum from one military officer to another.

Omaha Beach details the doctrine based system of warfare or basically politics of war. It reads well and has lots of information about the different ideas and plans for the invasion that the commanders wanted to use but was scrapped as soon as the ramps opened. People expecting a forward account on the battle itself will be disappointed since only the first chapter actually talks about it. But if you want to know everything there is to know about the stratagies of warfare then this book is it.

Lewis strongly critizes Omar Bardley's conduct during the planning for Operation Overload. Bradley did not allow enough commandos or air strikes to destroy the German beach obstacles on Normandy Beach. Bradley also ignored General Pete Cortlett's advice that the pre-invasion bombardment should be longer than planned. The invasion was planned in the early morning which made the invasion force easy targets for the German defenders. Bradley refused to plan the landing to place at night because he thought that airpower would neutralize the German defenders. But the aircraft used to disable the German defenses were heavy bombers which were inaccurate rather than smaller tactical aircraft more suited for the task. To make matters worse Bradley placed newly trained soldiers in the first wave while the veterans were in reserve. I would highly reccomend this book to anyone interested in the often overlooked flaws of commanders such as Omar Bradley.