Talk:Pointe du Hoc

The Guns of Navarone is set in the Greek Islands (the natives being a major plot point), is set around an evacuation rather than an invasion, on a mission that lasts several days rather than just an hour or so, and the guns are destroyed instead of being found missing. I don't think the few similarities left are with the mention. DJ Clayworth 14:36, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation
Can anyone provide an accurate pronunciation? The first two words in the name are standard French; so they're easy enough, but how is "Hoc" pronounced? Does it rhyme with "bloc" or with "beau"? I've been able to gather very little from the Internet, but there does seem to be some suggestion that the C is not pronounced, although I think that would be rather unusual for French. Anyway, if anyone knows for sure, here are the two possible IPA pronunciations:

/pwε&#771;t dy &#596;k/ (rhyming with "bloc")

/pwε&#771;t dy o/ (rhyming with "beau")

One of those may be transferred into the article. Kelisi 00:38, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Come to think of it, the final C in tabac is not pronounced; so perhaps I can risk inserting the second of those two. If anyone finds out it's the other one, don't hesitate to change it. I'll try asking at French Wikipedia. Kelisi 00:47, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I've had an answer. According to Noplay over on fr.wikipedia, the C is pronounced; so it's /pwε&#771;t dy &#596;k/. So I'll change it again. Kelisi 16:43, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Hoc is pronunced like the French words "bloc", "choc" (shock) and "roc" (rock), final C is clearly accentuated, so [ɔk] in French and the old Norman pronunciation [χɔc] is no more in use. Nortmannus (talk) 18:44, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Little Boy reference
I've got a lead on the citation which is needed for the section "The Target" which states "several bombardments, which consisted of more total firepower than the bomb Little Boy": http://www.worldwar2history.info/D-Day/Pointe-Du-Hoc.html is a synopsis of the Pointe du Hoc engagement based on Ch. 8 of "The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys: The Men of World War II" by Stephen E. Ambrose, and it states that "Pointe-du-Hoc got hit by more than ten kilotons of high explosives, the equivalent of the explosive power of the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima". If someone could look up the actual page reference from that book, we could have a full bibliographic citation. --Country Wife 15:43, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd take that with a large pinch of salt - Ambrose describes the cliff that the rangers climbed as variously 200,
 * 100 and 40 metres. In fact it's about 24 metres (80 feet) at the point the rangers scaled it, and a heap of :debris from the bombing effectively reduced that by nearly half, as photographs taken at the time show. :I've :found a reference that suggests that around 700 tons of bombs were dropped there in the 24 hours :preceding the assault. That would imply at least 14 raids of that size - I can't find any reference to :suggest any more than 6 raids, and they almost certainly would have been of smaller tonnage.. --Rambler24 (talk) 22:20, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

This sentence is a bit...uncool.
The battle looks, however, much cooler in the video game than in real life as many of the Rangers are killed in spectacular fashion at the base of the cliff.

Maybe delete it in whole? I'll leave it up to you guys. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mantyla (talk • contribs) 23:38, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Were the cannon useless?
The article states: "The new battery location inland was sited solely for Utah beach." but in his book "Alarm i Atlanvallen (Kungliga Krigsvetenskapsakademien 1953), Bertil Stjernfelt states (p87) "That these clumsy 14-tonne cannon were very difficult to bring about even on the purposebuilt concrete foundations was ("väl omvittnat",approx translation: "Well known according to testimony from")the german troops. How much more difficult then would it not have been to traverse them when the cannon were grouped along a narrow country road, flanked by dense hedges, with the cannon close together their wheels in a deep ditch...?" this, since the cannon were grouped pointing NW would indicate that Omaha was not a target anymore. And so far this is consistent with the statement in the article, however:

On the same page Stjernfelt claims that the available traverse for the guns in their positions did not permit them to fire even at Utah beach, only across the Vire bay farther north.

This would seem to indicate that the battery was useless during the invasion except for the staggeringly unlikely event that an unaimed round would fall on a ship in transit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.252.165.157 (talk) 18:41, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Number of completed Casemates
Only two casements were actually completed out of 6 planned. I don't have a reference, but I did count them when I visited the site in 2008. I have not edited the main page to make the correction as I don't have a reference to cite, but this does need to be fixed. Nfgusedautoparts (talk) 01:26, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Number of 155 mm cannons
On the map we can see 6 emplacements for 155 mm cannons, according to several sources, there were only 5 cannons. Nortmannus (talk) 18:50, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure, there were only 5 guns, but 6 emplacements. The 6th gun had been destroyed by an allied air bombing, that may be explains why they had been removed before D-Day. Nortmannus (talk) 00:51, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

The Boys of Pointe du Hoc
Reagan gave a noted speech which featured comments on this particular part of the battle and is commonly known at "The Boys of Pointe du Hoc" Seems like it might be notable enough to be worth some comment, though I'm not sure the section titled Media is right for it. Here is the reference from the Reagan archives http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1984/60684a.htm Phil (talk) 07:43, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

British Commando presence
In the Osprey book on the raid, it has an artwork scene with a British commando visible. The caption states that there was at least one commando as a liaison with the Rangers. Presumably this is based on fact? Were there any British commandos on the Pointe Du Hoc? I'm not doubting it, as the book was written by a reputable historian (not Ambrose!), but any additional information would be interesting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.20.167.135 (talk) 13:43, 12 September 2012 (UTC)


 * A British Lt. Col Tom Trevor was there as liaison officer ( http://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/first-night) GraemeLeggett (talk) 14:51, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
 * One can see a photo of him, with a bandage around his head at the bottom right corner, here--Timtak (talk) 18:29, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Ben My Chree
The article claims that the Ranger command was aboard the HMS Ben-my-Chree. However, the only Ben-my-chree I can find any information was in 1917. She was later floated and broken up for scrap in 1923. The reference provided in this article does not point to useful information, and fails to back up the claim. Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:40, 24 March 2013 (UTC)


 * TSS Ben-my-Chree (1927) is the ship in question. GraemeLeggett (talk) 13:54, 24 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks Graeme! Maury Markowitz (talk) 21:55, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

War crimes
Was the "number of French civilians...executed" investigated as a war crime?Royalcourtier (talk) 04:43, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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Criticism of Action
While I agree that the criticism of the action by amateur historian Gary Sterne is potentially valid, I do not agree that the 'findings' of one researcher, otherwise not widely supported, are valid enough that his opinion should be included in the introduction to the page — Preceding unsigned comment added by Darktalesblog (talk • contribs) 15:12, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Under Prelude
There doesn't seem to be a reference for the assertion that "Recently released documents in the US Archives show that Rudder knew prior to landing that the casemates were unfinished and only two were actually structurally close to being ready." A link to those documents would be nice rather than taking the author's word for it..John Simpson54 (talk) 03:34, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Casualties
Re: "77 of the 225 soldiers that had landed at the Pointe had been killed, with another 152 wounded". How is this possible? 77 + 152 = 229. Maybe some of those counted as wounded later got counted as killed?