Rangers at Pointe du Hoc on D-Day — The Most Dangerous Mission of 6th June 1944 (NO AI!)

On D-Day, 225 men were ordered to scale a 30-metre cliff under fire, destroy a German gun battery, and hold the position until reinforced — with no guarantee that reinforcement was coming. This is the full story of the Rangers at Pointe du Hoc. I'm a professional WW2 battlefield guide, and Pointe du Hoc is one of the sites I know best. In this extended video — just over an hour — I walk every part of the battlefield: the cliff edge, the surviving bomb craters, the gun casemates, the inland orchard where the guns were actually found, and the ground where the Rangers fought for two days against German counterattacks before relief finally arrived. The planning: Colonel James Earl Rudder's 2nd Ranger Battalion trained for this assault in England and Scotland, rehearsing cliff climbs they knew would be contested every metre of the way. The German 155mm guns at Pointe du Hoc could range both Utah Beach and Omaha Beach — which is why Supreme Command considered their destruction essential to the entire D-Day operation. The climb: rocket-propelled grappling hooks, rope ladders, fire coming down from above. Of 225 Rangers who landed, fewer than 90 remained effective after the first day of fighting. The discovery: what the Rangers found when they finally reached the gun pits — and the patrol that located the actual guns hidden in an orchard several hundred metres inland. Two days of fighting: how a shattered force of American Rangers held Pointe du Hoc against sustained German counterattacks until relief arrived on D-Day+2. Then and now: a complete walkthrough of Pointe du Hoc as it stands today — the preserved craters, the intact German observation bunker, the Ranger memorial on the point. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Chapters: 00:00 - 09:38 - The Mission at Pointe du Hoc & Why It Mattered 09:39 - 21:30 - The German Battery, Atlantic Wall & Ranger Selection 23:06 - 25:16 - Bombing the Battery & The Guns Are Moved 25:17 - 45:40 - D-Day Morning, The Landing, Climbing the Cliffs & the Rangers at Omaha Beach 45:40 - 50:30 - Reinforcing the Rangers at Pointe du Hoc 50:31 - 01:02:02 - Omaha, Counterattacks, Relief & The Cost of the Mission ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ VISITING POINTE DU HOC? Most people spend twenty minutes at Pointe du Hoc and leave having seen maybe a third of it. On a tour with me I'll take you through the complete battlefield — the cliff edge, the German observation post, the gun casemates, and the inland ground where the real fighting happened after the Rangers got to the top. It's a site that rewards time and context. I'm a UK-based battlefield guide who travels to lead tours across the key WW2 sites of northwest Europe — from the D-Day beaches of Normandy in June 1944, through Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands in September 1944, into the Ardennes for the Battle of the Bulge that winter, and on into Germany in the spring of 1945. If you're planning a battlefield trip and want a guide who knows this ground, get in touch. 👉 https://www.ww2wayfinder.com 📧 [email protected] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ MORE VIDEOS ON THIS CHANNEL ▶ How Did Anyone Survive the First Wave at Omaha Beach? ▶ Inside the Forgotten German Bunkers of Omaha Beach ▶ What Was Behind Utah Beach on D-Day? ▶ The Battle for Sainte-Mère-Église on D-Day ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Each WW2 Wayfinder video is AI free. Every aspect has been researched, scripted and filmed by myself. #PointeDuHoc #Rangers #DDay #Normandy #WW2 #2ndRangerBattalion #RuddersRangers #ThenAndNow #DDayLandings #WW2History #NoAI #DDay1944 #ColonelRudder #RangersLeadTheWay #NormandyTour #WW2Wayfinder #June61944 #DayOfDays #BattlefieldTour #PointeDuHocToday Like what I do? If you're able to, you can support the channel here: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/WW2Wayfinder?... WW2 Wayfinder Merch: https://www.bunkerbranding.com/pages/... Buy Me A Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ww2wayfi... Follow WW2 Wayfinder On: Facebook:   / ww2wayfinder   Instagram:   / ww2wayfinder   Buy Me A Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ww2wayfi... Music: https://www.epidemicsound.com