Special Engineer Task Force

The mission of the Special Engineer Task Force on June 6 on Omaha is the destruction of the beach obstacles and the clearing of 16 gaps, 45 meters-wide each, to allow the landing crafts to hit the beach, and this before the tide rises again.
This ad hoc Task Force is made of units belonging to the Navy or the Engineers and attached to the 1st Infantry Division.
Each Gap Assault Team is made of a detachement of 27 men from an Engineer Combat Battalion and 14 others from an NCDU (Naval Combat Demolition Unit). The Gap Assault Teams are commanded by an officer from the engineers and are reinforced for the heavy work by a Tank Dozer. The are scheduled to land at H+03, right behind the first infantry wave.
The Gap Support Teams have the same table of organisation and will be supporting two Gap Assault Teams each, landing at H+08.

The Special Engineer Task Force on Omaha

SETF troops are crossing the Channel aboard LCTs and transfer to LCMs their equipment and explosives-ladden moments only before the assault. The SETF meets the same difficulties during the beach approach as the other assault units and at least half the Gap Assault Teams hit the sand 15 minutes behind schedule. This delay prevents the men from blowing gaps through the obstacles because infantry troops are already using them as covers.

On top of that, the Gap Assault Teams are taken under a heavy fire as the germans are particularly targeting the rubber dinghies loaded with 225Kgs of explosives each.
The SETF is only able to open a few of the planned gaps during the morning and they will have to wait for the afternoon and the low tide again to work in better conditions but still without explosives, as the beach is crowded with men and materiel.

On June 6, The Gap Assault Teams will suffer casualty rates between 34% and 41% and even 53% for the NCDUs.