Background of Victory: Combined Operations Speed Up the War

VOLUME 172

NUMBER 3

SEPTEMBER, 1943

86th YEAR OF CONTINUOUS PUBLICATION

by H. A. ST. GEORGE SAUNDERS

A FEW days after the Allies landed in North Africa, their Commander in Chief, General -Eisenhower, sent a message to Vice Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations Command, in which he referred to that invasion as “the greatest combined operation of all time.”

This record, if it really was one, — the General may have forgotten or ignored the expedition of the Persian Xerxes against the Greeks “some twenty-three centuries earlier and a few hundred miles further eastward,” — did not stand for long. A still larger expedition, this time against Sicily, invaded that island in the small hours of July 10, 1943.

Both these expeditions were on a large scale. That against North Africa involved between eight and nine hundred ships and that against Sicily more than three thousand, if the smaller type of landing craft be included. Enterprises of such pith and moment do not instantly take shape after conception in the minds of Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Churchill, and their respective general staffs. They do not, like Athene, spring fully armed from the head of Zeus. They are the culminating, tangible, visible, and — for the enemy — devastating result of a highly developed technique of which the study began as far back as the dark days of June, 1940 — a technique which is merely the modern development of principles originally worked out by Drake, Essex, Howard, and other harassers of Spain in the great age of Queen Elizabeth.

It is the purpose of this article to survey briefly the background to this, the latest, Sicilian expedition, and to examine the broad outlines of what may be called the combined-operation method of securing victory. The invasions of French North Africa and of Sicily have succeeded for no other reason than that this method was used. There is indeed no other way of ensuring the destruction of the Axis powers. Reduced to its simplest terms, the problem of attacking them is the problem of securing a foothold on the shores of their fortress. The breaching of defenses is the second operation; and the invasion of the country behind is the third.

This problem has been set before the Allies by the simple fact that unless the land route through the Caucasus and along the northern portion of the Black Sea be chosen by our invading armies — and there is no sign as yet that such a choice is contemplated —the only way to reach the German and Italian European fortress is across the sea. This entails an amphibious operation, and such an operation is the most hazardous known to war. Ships are most vulnerable when they are within range of the enemy’s coastal defense guns. An army can be most readily destroyed when it is shipborne and therefore unable to deploy or to use its weapons.

Copyright 1943, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass, All rights reserved.

The success, therefore, of an amphibious operation depends primarily on preventing the enemy from seizing and exploiting the moment when the invading forces are at their weakest. The dice are heavily loaded in favor of the defense, and the success of the invasion depends on the most careful preparation, on paying the utmost heed to the lessons of the past, and, above all, on the most perfect combination of all three main branches of the armed forces of the Allies: the navy, the army, and the air force.

2

CONINCED, as it has always been, of the necessity of taking the first steps towards ultimate victory by means of amphibious operations, the British High Command began its study of them almost before the last soldier had left the smoking beaches of Dunkirk. It set about providing the necessary training through what soon came to be known as the Combined Operations Command. It created a soldier with special training— the Commando soldier — to carry out a series of experiments with the object of determining the severity of the problem, and a sailor with special training, whose task it would be to handle the special type of craft indispensable for the transporting of an invading army.

From June, 1940, onwards there were men engaged in finding out, usually at the risk of their lives, what exactly was the best method to use when attacking the enemy from the sea. To discover this technique has been one of the most important objects of the Commando raids on the coasts of the Continent. Every time one was carried out, the lessons brought back were carefully studied and included in the ever increasing, ever more strenuous training program of the growing Combined Operations Command. No detail has been too small to study, from the best type of close-support anti-tank gun to the most suitable cosmetic for use in camouflaging the face.

Side by side with the training of the Commando soldiers there proceeded that of the sailors. Some of these had to learn the vitally important duties of the beachmaster, the man who is at once “the constable on point duty and the foreman in charge of the delivery van.” The beachmaster and the military landing officer must control the newly captured beaches, see to the handling of supplies, and make sure that their steady flow towards the front is uninterrupted. The sailors in the assault ships have had to learn how to approach the shore, land on it, and then pull off and remain within instant call.

Men who for years have rightly regarded the running of a ship aground as “the first, last, and most perfect example of professional incompetence ” have had to learn how to do so under all conditions. The craft they handle are of a most unorthodox kind. Before the outbreak of this war, the Committee of Imperial Defence set up an Inter-Services Training and Development Centre with, among others, the duty of designing prototypes of equipment and craft. They produced three: one to carry troops, another vehicles, and a third to provide close support fire. From these craft all the many types of landing craft and support ships have been developed.

Production at first was halting and beset with difficulties. Throughout 1940 and for a great part of 1941 the burden of British industry was too great to allow a big production of landing craft to be undertaken—so much so that in the autumn of that year an appeal was made to America to undertake the job.

At first the American Navy showed little enthusiasm for the new and strange types of craft whose construction they were asked to authorize. But the complete change in the situation produced by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought about a corresponding change of heart. Being realists, the American High Command at once saw the importance of producing such craft. They set about doing so and the victories in Guadalcanal, North Africa, Sicily, and in the central Solomons, have been the result up to date.

While the Combined Operations Command was thus learning the job of invasion tactics, while the Commandos were going out with blackened faces “to pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon,” the rest of the British Army was very busy. Battle schools were set up throughout Britain to provide the same kind of training as the Commandos were getting. Many thousands, indeed many hundreds of thousands, have passed and are passing through them. Both here and at the Combined Training Centres, Private Atkins learns a new technique, side by side with Canadians, Australians, Americans, and the free forces of the overrun nations of Europe. Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, French, Poles, Czechs, Greeks, and the rest who form the armed forces of the United Nations labored to acquire similar knowledge. By the late autumn of 1942 a large body of men belonging to the Navy and the Army was, so far as training was concerned, ready to attempt the hazardous task of invasion.

Nor was the air side neglected. Not only were the Army Coöperation Command of the Royal Air Force and its counterpart in the American Army brought into being and carefully trained, but parachute and air-borne troops were recruited. Small in numbers in 1941, before fourteen months had elapsed they had grown to be a very considerable force.

In the British Army they belong to the Army Air Corps, consisting of parachute and glider regiments. Already they have achieved some remarkable results in action. The parachute battalion which stormed one of the Jebel Mansur hills in the North African campaign earned the admiration of the guards who fought beside them on that day, and their exploits, with those of the corresponding American troops, have shortened the campaign in Sicily.

Here then, at last, is a huge and daily increasing force of all arms specially trained to carry out invasions. How is it used? It is necessary at once to emphasize that the combination of all arms achieved in the field of training and of battle has also been achieved in the field of planning. This may be a truism, but it is one which must not be forgotten, for the lesson that coöperation means victory, independence defeat, has been hard to learn, it has been learned, for the most part, in the sands of North Africa and the gritty hills above Tunis and Bizerta — where the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force have seen each other sharply defined in the hard light of battle. This most penetrating illumination shows up every fault and every virtue with naked candor.

3

COÖRDINATION between the three arms is now as complete as it is humanly possible to make it. To give but one example, it is the invariable practice of General Montgomery to establish his headquarters either in the building occupied by the Air Force Commander or next door to it. Coöperation extends far beyond and behind the field of battle. All combined operations of any magnitude are laid out by the joint planners at the Admiralty, War Office, and Air Ministry, assisted by experts who produce an outlined plan for an operation, the general idea of which has been discussed by the chiefs of staff. The outlined plan is then handed to the Force Commanders, who proceed to produce the final detailed plan.

These plans have of necessity to be prepared months in advance. That again is something which needs strong emphasis. It is impossible to improvise an invasion on the vast scale of the Sicilian expedition. The reason is simple. The exceedingly complicated apparatus of modern war has to be transported to the scene of action in ships: the collection and loading of them, therefore, become of paramount importance, and every plan ultimately depends on the number of ships available, not only at the moment the operation is to be carried out, but perhaps for many months previously. At a very early stage the planners, chiefly accepting the recommendation of the Naval Force Commander, will inform the Admiralty of the number of ships estimated necessary for the undertaking. The Admiralty — probably after a protest or two — will agree on the ultimate figure and will set about the task of collecting the necessary ships.

This job is hard enough, for there is, of course, no such thing as an idle ship these days — none, at any rate, flying the flag of any of the United Nations. Ships are all fully employed carrying food and munitions. A choice has therefore to be made between that part of this sea traffic which is indispensable and that which can be temporarily suspended. The Admiralty makes that choice. And it has to concern itself not only with the merchant ships required, but equally with their escort. All the vessels of the Royal Navy and many vessels of the American Navy, not to mention those of the Royal Dutch, the Norwegian, the Free French, and the Polish navies, are employed in the work of protecting our merchant shipping.

To switch ships to the escorting of the big convoys which will carry the troops and their weapons to the chosen beaches is a matter calling for clear and considered judgment. What North or South Atlantic convoy can be dispensed with for two or three months, thus releasing its escort? What light coastal forces can be spared from their daily task of shooting up enemy shipping along the Dutch and Belgian coasts to give the close support vital for covering the landings? What great ships can be taken away from the home or other fleets to cope with the Italian Navy if it should have the courage to show itself, or to provide the heavy shelling which will soften the proposed objectives? In addition to close support and cover against the enemy battle fleet, anti-submarine escorts must also be provided, and for this work still more ships must be taken from their regular routine.

The problem of shipping once solved, the problems of supply have to be tackled. Modern ships are mostly oil-driven; therefore tankers must be provided in large quantities at the different ports en route, to ensure that when the ships finally sail against the enemy they will have full tanks and be able to remain in action in the battle zone as long as necessary. Similarly, repair services have to be enlarged and made available for possibly a considerable number of ships. For no one can calculate beforehand with exactitude what the casualties among the transports and their escort may be.

Nor is oil the only vital material to be considered. There is also the question of ammunition, and this is further complicated by the fact that there are many different types and many different calibers of guns, all of which must be provided with the shells and charges needed.

Ships, oil, ammunition — these have been dealt with. Then comes the actual planning of the ships’ movements, which is the responsibility of the Naval Commander working in close conjunction with his Army and Air Force colleagues. Once the date and time of the first landing are known, the planners, in conjunction with the Admiralty, work out an elaborate schedule based on probabilities. It covers the tactical loading of the cargoes carried by all the ships.

Here again the job is far from simple. Not only must the right number of ships be loaded with the proper quantity of stores and munitions, but these must be put on board the respective ships in the right order. If, for instance, Bren gun carriers in large quantities will be required at some point the day after the operation has begun, the ships carrying them must have loaded them last so that they may be the first to emerge from the holds. And so it is with tanks and self-propelling artillery and the rest.

Great foresight is necessary throughout. And yet, however keen, the planning cannot be infallible — because it is impossible ever to say with certainty what the exact degree of opposition on enemy-held beaches will be. If it be heavy, then naturally the first ships arriving after those which have landed the infantry must carry tanks, guns, and ammunition. If the opposition be slight, other weapons, such as anti-aircraft guns, may be more useful. The question of stowage is one of intimate concern not only to the Navy but also to the sea-transport officers of the Army. They deal with it. And the comparatively smooth working of the arrangements for the invasion of North Africa and of Sicily is a measure of their success.

All this labor, however, great though it is, still does not exhaust the task of the Navy. Not only must it protect ships and supply fire support; it must also produce the mine sweepers necessary to clear a path for the invading fleet. And when once a port has been captured, it must put ashore the necessary naval personnel to put the port in working order and to maintain it.

4

THAT, in brief outline, is the task of the Navy. That of the Army is self-evident. It must get ashore quickly. And once ashore, it must establish and enlarge a bridgehead sufficiently wide to enable troops subsequently landed to use it as a springboard from which to carry out operations against the interior of the invaded country. It is in the establishment of this bridgehead that air-borne troops play so important a part.

These specialists are used to create disturbances behind the lines of the enemy and to disrupt them. Their motto is dislocation and they have proved in Sicily their ability to live up to it. The parachute troops dropped near Comiso and Ragusa, for example, were largely responsible for the capture of this airfield and town far earlier than had been expected. And the same is true of the performance of the American parachutists, who throughout trained in the closest harmony with their British comrades. The glider-borne troops were equally successful.

They are tough men. One of the original units chosen was the famous Royal Welch Fusiliers, who volunteered to a man for this service. Not only must these troops be tough. They must also be intelligent. Much depends on the individual men, for they go into action far more scattered than is the case with ordinary infantry units. They must therefore use their initiative; that they can do so has been amply shown by the Americans round Licata, and the British round that famous bridge, Primosole. The use of these troops was a vital part of the strategic plan for the capture of Sicily.

Casualties among the air-borne troops were heavy but not crippling. At one point some twenty gliders fell into the sea, for the objectives they were detailed to attack were close to the shore. And in the storm in which the preliminary stages of the operation were carried out, the exact moment at which to release the tow rope of the glider was not always correctly calculated. Nevertheless enough of them got ashore to be highly effective in the task of baffling the forward defenses.

The Air Force must be at work days and perhaps weeks before zero hour, for it is its job to make sure that the fighter cover will be adequate, it is quite impossible for the Navy to approach a hostile coast, let alone for the troops to land on it, unless that air cover is effective. The raid on Dieppe on August 19, 1942, was proof of the need for air cover. And the attack on Sicily confirmed its effectiveness. There the softening-up process carried out by the Royal Air Force against the enemy airfields was so efficient that these fields were to all intents and purposes out of action when the moment for invasion arrived.

The targets attacked in the pre-invasion phase are chosen by the Air Force Commander with the sole purpose of ensuring air superiority from zero hour onwards. Superiority is secured by blitzing enemy airfields and by attacking communications. The first process has now reached the stage of an art. Every airfield is attacked in a different way according to its situation and the nature of its surface. Sometimes the best method is to send over squadrons of Fortresses flying in formations similar in outline to that of the airfield. At a given moment they drop their bomb load simultaneously, thus destroying runways and hangars. With another type of airfield it may be better to deliver a low-level attack and use machine guns to destroy dispersed aircraft.

Once the invasion is under way, the task of providing immediate air cover falls on the fighters. In Sicily squadrons of these aircraft based on Malta gave that long-enduring island its chance for revenge. Making over a thousand sorties a day, the fighters prevented any air attack from developing on the hundreds of ships lying off the beaches, or on the men ashore. More than that, they took a full share in harassing and disorganizing the enemy. In desert warfare, columns of transports can leave the road and disperse fairly easily over the surrounding country. The opposite is true in a country like Sicily. There transport has to stick to the roads, for the surrounding country is either mountain or soft cultivated land. It is enough, therefore, to attack vehicles with machine-gun fire and thus to force them into the ditch by the wayside.

Coöperation is the secret of success. And this teamwork must be achieved not only between allies always hitherto, as history shows, the most difficult of tasks — but also between the individual branches of the fighting services. That it has been achieved, North Africa and Sicily are witnesses.

Yet a word of warning will not be out of place. The Allies have so far worked wonders, but not miracles. Whatever shortcomings have become apparent in the two invasions hitherto carried out have not been serious enough to prevent success. That is encouraging, but it must not be forgotten that neither expedition met with really resolute opposition. In places, it is true, such as Casablanca, Oran, and Licata, fighting was severe. But, generally speaking, the invading armies were put ashore on beaches not held with the resolution displayed, for example, by the defenders of Dieppe.

To conclude, therefore, that the invasion of the Axis European fortress is easy or, at any rate, not unduly costly would be a grave mistake. That it can be effected by resolute and determined men seems certain. But their success, when it comes, will have been achieved only by their rigid determination to profit by the lessons of the past. Not the least of these is the absolute necessity for complete confidence in each other, not only between the Allies but also between all branches of the fighting services. Never was the motto of the Combined Operations Command, “United we conquer,” more apposite than it is today.