A Memorial to the Tankmen of the 741st Armored Batallion Sent to their deaths June 6, 1944 without a countermanding order

The D-Day landings saw 156,000 troops landed in Normandy on the first day, of which 4,413 were killed.
The Duplex Drive Sherman Tank was designed to ‘float’ onto the beach heads to back up the troops. The tank was a disaster on D-Day at Omaha Beach. The plan was to launch the tanks from a distance of two miles from the shore where they would then propel them- selves to the beach invasion and provide armored gun support to the infantry troops.

The 741st Tank Battalion launched 29 tanks off shore, only two made it to the beach. The other 27 sank, most within one minute, tak- ing their crews with them to the bottom. The canvas sides of the tanks were made to resist waves up to 1 foot in height. On D-Day at Omaha Beach, 6 foot tall waves swamped the tanks as they left the landing craft. The underwater cemeteries off of the Normandy coast are a grave reminder of the human cost of war.

Duplex Drive Sherman Weight: 35 tons
Speed: 25 mph on land, four knots in water Engine: 410 hp diesels - linked to two propellers

On 6 June 1944, a unit of 29 amphibious tanks launched from Allied ships to attack the Nazi-held Normandy beaches. Fitted with large canvas skirts around the upper portion of the vehicle, the DD tanks were designed to float low in the water - appearing to the enemy as nothing more menacing than a rubber boat. These Duplex Drive tanks of the 741st Armored Battalion were launched from landing craft four km from the beach.

World War II Overview September 23, 2009, Excerpt
I would like to introduce some other voices of people who are not here; many who did not survive in the war. One of the aspects of the D-day invasion on Omaha beach, called ‘bloody Omaha’ on June 6, 1944 was that all the landing forces were equipped with amphibi- ous tanks. The term is somewhat of a misnomer because these tanks weighed about 34 tons, and they were fitted with a canvas super- structure that was supposed to keep the water out, but it was not very effective. There was very low freeboard, which if breached would sink the tank. In fact, in the British landing on Utah beach, the tactical orders were that the LST landing ships would release these tanks almost a mile from the beach. After they released a half dozen, and all of them sank within 30 seconds because of a rough sea, they realized that this was a futile action, so they continued and released the tanks much closure to shore, most successfully. But un- fortunately, the Americans at Omaha beach followed orders and released all these tanks, with five-man crews who were drowned with- in a minute. Nobody speaks for these people because they were lost, so someone does speak for them now. Once the infantryman got to Omaha beach they had absolutely no cover. The big advantage of a tank is as a great thing to hide behind. You can hide a couple of dozen peoples behind the tanks against machine gun pillboxes, but they essentially had no tanks. In the official report I cited, which had the ship number buildup, the mention that “most of the tanks at Omaha were lost” consists of those few words.

- Joseph Degenfelder, Lt. Ordnance, 1st Armored Division 1962-63

Prepared for the Cleveland Flats Arts Forum, exhibit of December 7, 2015