On the night of 5-6 June 1944, 454 B-24 bombers dropped 1,300 tons of bombs on Omaha Beach. But due to cloud cover difficulties, they all exploded 5 km inland, thus leaving the German cannons and machine gun nests on top of the cliffs intact. When the first American soldiers landed, the Germans flooded them with heavy machine-gun fire, all hell breaking loose. In the sector below Vierville-sur-Mer, the Able Company (116th Infantry Regiment) thus lost 100 out of its 155 G.I.s in just a matter of minutes, shot dead or drowned before they could even fight. These young soldiers are all honoured at Colleville-sur-Mer Normandy American Cemetery.