Rudder quickly realised and ordered the flotilla west along the coast, but the delay cost the Rangers thirty-five minutes. They reached the Pointe at 07:05 am, five minutes after the deadline to signal the remainder of their force, so 5th Battalion – accompanied by A and B companies from 2nd Battalion – moved towards Omaha beach instead. D, E and F were all Rudder had to take Pointe du Hoc.
The mistake had other consequences. As the Ranger's flotilla sailed to the Pointe they moved parallel to several miles of defended coastline and came under attack from machine guns, mortars and artillery. Despite the aid of USS Satterlee and HMS Talybont, who realised the situation and fired onto the coast, suppressing the German troops, another DUKW was sunk. In addition, the Germans which USS Texas had suppressed atop Pointe du Hoc had over half an hour to realise the bombardment had stopped and return to their positions. Finally, all three companies approached from the East, and the remainder of D company abandoned the plan to attack from the west in favour of regaining lost time.
The first phase of the assault involved jumping out from the LCAs, crossing a small and slippy shingle beach and climbing the cliff face via ropes, rope ladders and grappling hooks which were fired by special rocket propelled launchers from the landing craft. Soaked by the sea, some of the ropes were now too heavy to reach the clifftop. Men sank into craters beneath the surf – created by Allied bombs and shells which had missed the Pointe – and had to struggle out, assisted by Mae West lifejackets and their comrades. Others were killed or wounded as they crossed the beach, the target of constant fire from a German machinegun post to the Ranger's left. The DUKWs weren't able to land on the shingle and their ladders couldn't be used. In addition, German defenders fired down from the cliffs, rolled grenades over and cut some of the ropes, which were now greasy and often hard to grip.
Amidst all this, the Rangers followed their training and took advantage of what luck they had. Allied bombing had caused part of the cliff to collapse, creating a muddy mound which Rangers could clamber up to rise a third of the way, or hide behind for cover. The grappling hooks had lit fuses on top, designed for no other reason than scaring German troops away with the pretence of a bomb, while the Naval ships continued to give what suppressive fire they could, pushing the defenders back from the edge. One intrepid Ranger even gave covering fire from the extended ladder of a DUKW, swinging back and forth in mid-air as the waves buffeted him around. The ragged cliffs also gave protection and once the first Rangers reached the top they gained some security for the climbers.
While this might sound nightmarish to the modern reader, some Rangers retained their sense of humour. Sergeant Gene Elder told his men as they reached the clifftop "Boys, keep your heads down, because headquarters has fouled up again and has issued the enemy live ammunition", while, after falling in a underwater shell hole, Lieutenant Kerchner got rather angry: "I wanted to find somebody to help me cuss out the British navy, but everybody was busily engrossed in their duties so I couldn't get any sympathy." (Both quotations from the online version of The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys: The Men of World War II by Stephen Ambrose at
http://www.worldwar2history.info/D-Day/Pointe-Du-Hoc.html)
