My son was watching the second episode of Band of Brothers last night. Its the one where Dick Winters and his boys knock out some German artillery that's shelling the Utah Beach landings. The artillery was identified to Winters as 88's, and most discussion describes them as such. However, when he got there, Winters discovered they were 105's. This photograph shows a German shell exploding on the beach. Even though the photo caption says the shell is an 88, it was probably from one of those guns. Its hard to tell the difference between an incoming 88 shell and a 105 shell, especially on your first day in combat.
The Americans had only 275 killed on Utah Beach that day. Most of those would have been the first wave, and most of the rest from shelling like this.
