Rank the Normandy Beach landings by difficulty

I don't think I've ever seen it put in quite this manner. Obviously people discuss the landings themselves and how difficult they were but an actual discussion of the easiest to hardest not so much.

Practically everyone agrees Omaha was the hardest, but is there a consensus on the easiest beach for example? Curious to hear where people would place UTAH, OMAHA, GOLD, JUNO, and SWORD.
 
What does 'hard' mean? Physically difficult? Most deadly? Longest transit time? Worst intelligence about? Least support?
 
Indy Neidell's 24 hours on DDay has some useful insights. It's good, but since there's 24 x 1hour episodes it takes a lot of watching, even when speeded up. Maybe start near the end to answer the OP's question to save time.

As for my answer - the airborne landings. So that's not a beach as such but it was an integral part of the attack as much as each of the beaches was and - as with all airborne attacks - was very dangerous. For the beaches? In all honesty, none was easy, especially if you look at the following days and weeks where bocage fighting, hard tank battles at Caen, etc and Cherbour peninsula took their toll on every contingent.
 
I wouldn't call any easy either but massive naval bombardments and utter air supremacy made Utah, Gold, and Sword relatively safe.

I'd call Utah the easiest because it was essentially flat ground that did not offer a natural spot for fortifications and which the Allies could bomb to utter smithereens, and indeed did so. Like, you look at the relatively sparse defenses on the beach proper you get the sense the Germans themselves knew it wasn't defensible. Gold was tougher and had significant defenses but they were relatively sparse compared to what was coming from the Channel, with the same being true to a lesser degree for Sword, although it had some especially bloody fighting around La Londe and Le Landel castles.

Then we have the two toughest nuts to crack: Juno and Omaha, the two places where the Germans really did seem intent on stopping the landing on the beach if the Allies came there. There does seem to be a consensus among academics that Juno had by far the heaviest defense on the beach proper, a ''devil's garden'', to use the wording of one of them, that the Canadian forces had to wade true. Add to that the fact that it was the only sector the Germans were able to muster an armored response on D-Day and IMO it is genuinely impressive that the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division made it the farthest in occupied France on June 6 IMO, and a source of justified national pride in Canada to this day. The tradition of it being the second toughest beach might have been mainly made in Canada but I'd argue it has been tacitly accepted by historians of most nationalities since it came into being.

Omaha had fewer fortifications than Juno overall but quality made up for lack of quantity: with several solid bluffs just outside the beach, the Germans had the natural positions in which to place their defenses they lacked elsewhere. It was the one beach that the Allies high command were genuinely uncomfortable about, and while the landing proved successful at the end events should show their fears weren't misplaced.
 
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I don't think I've ever seen it put in quite this manner. Obviously people discuss the landings themselves and how difficult they were but an actual discussion of the easiest to hardest not so much.

Practically everyone agrees Omaha was the hardest, but is there a consensus on the easiest beach for example? Curious to hear where people would place UTAH, OMAHA, GOLD, JUNO, and SWORD.

Personally I think every landing beach chosen was an utter pain in the arse and thus a dead heat in ranking as amphibious operations are by their very nature extremely difficult.

What made each beach stand out was how even slightest changes made each beach easy or a bloodbath. I think there's to many variables to put a ranking on them.
 
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