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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7 9 1 7 3 4 6
GODSON, SUSAN HALL THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMPHIBIOUS WARFARE IN WORLD WAR I I AS REFLECTED IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF ADMIRAL JOHN LESSLIE HALL, J R ., USN.
THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, PH.D., 1979
UniversiV Micnjfilms International 300 n . z e e b r o a d, a n n a r b o r, mi a sio g
© COPYRIGHT
BY
SUSAN HALL GODSON
1979
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMPHIBIOUS WARFARE IN WORLD WAR II
AS REFLECTED IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF
ADMIRAL JOHN LESSLIE HALL, JR., USN
by
Susan Hall Godson
Submitted to the
Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences
of The American University
in Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for the Degree
of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
History
Signatures of Committee:
Chairman : Robert L. Beisner
Dean of the College David J. Brandenburg
Date; ^~^SL(Li_ ^ C L x * ____ Dean C . Allard, Jr.
1979
The American University Washington, D.C. 20016
3BE AltEEICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
s & s y Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without pemrissich. CONTENTS
LIST OF M A P S ...... i l l
INTRODUCTION ...... 1
CHAPTER I. THE PREWAR SETTING ...... 10
CHAPTER II. OPERATION TORCH: NORTH AFRICA AND THE NORTHWEST AFRICAN SEA FRONTIER ...... 46
CHAPTER III. OPERATION HUSKY: SICILY ...... 89
CHAPTER IV. OPERATION AVALANCHE : S A L E R N O ...... 129
CHAPTER V. PREPARING FOR NORMANDY ...... 166
CHAPTER VI. OPERATION NEPTUNE-OVERLORD: THE OMAHA BEACHES OF NORMANDY ...... 213
CHAPTER VII. OPERATION ICEBERG: OKINAWA ...... 265
CHAPTER VIII. OPERATION OLYMPIC: KYUSHU AND AFTER ...... 322
CHAPTER IX. AN E V A L U A T I O N ...... 354
APPENDICES ...... 382
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 397
IX
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF MAPS
Landings at Fedala and the Capture of Casablanca ...... 387
The Mediterranean ...... 388
Operation Husky: Sicily ...... 389
Invasion Plans— Salerno ...... 390
Naval Bases in British Isles ...... 391
Legend for Preceding M a p ...... 392
Final Overlord P l a n ...... 393
Pacific Theater ...... 394
Operation Iceberg: Okinawa ...... 395
Operation Olympic: Kyushu ...... 396
111
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION
As the years following World War II turned into decades, a number
of accounts of the navy's wartime activities appeared; and these books
described, with varying degrees of competence and accuracy, aspects of
naval operations, ships, and leadership. Yet, the study of the navy's
amphibious operations, vital in executing the Anglo-American strategy of
transporting Allied armies to engage the Axis on their own territory,
has received little attention from historians and other writers.
The Literature
Still the best method of studying United States naval actions of
the second World War is through Samuel Eliot Morison's fifteen-volume
History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (Boston: Little,
Brown & Co., 1947-1962), although the author does not provide sufficient
detail on the evolution of amphibious warfare. Other published works
concentrate on operations in the Pacific, to the total exclusion of
amphibious campaigns in the European theater.
Although there are a number of books covering various aspects of
specific assaults in the Pacific, only two works deal directly with
overall amphibious operations. George C. Dyer's two-volume The Amphibians
Came to Conquer: The Story of Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1972) told of the contributions made by the
1
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. commander of the Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet, to operations in the
south and central Pacific. Daniel E. Barbey wrote of the campaigns that
he commanded in the southwest Pacific in MacArthur's Amphibious Navy:
Seventh Amphibious Force Operations, 1943-1945 (Annapolis: Naval Institute
Press, 1969). Otherwise, the reader must rely on the appropriate
volumes of the official histories such as United States Army in World
War II, and the Marine Historical Branch, History of U.S. Marine Corps
Operations in World War II (Washington: Government Printing Office,
1958-71), for brief glimpses of the navy's amphibious role. In addition,
the Marine Corps Monographs (Washington: Government Printing Office,
1947-55), consisting of fifteen separate and thorough accounts of
individual Pacific campaigns, shed some light on naval assaults.
Jeter A. Isely and Philip A. Growl, The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War:
Its Theory, and Its Practice in the Pacific (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1951) have included useful sections on the development
of the navy's amphibious tactics and equipment. All of the studies of
the marines focus, quite naturally, on the leathernecks; the navy is
peripheral.
Turning to naval operations in the Atlantic, the historian finds
no specialized, scholarly accounts that deal with amphibious operations.
Most of the published works are journalistic and designed for the popular
market. There is no book about amphibious warfare or naval leaders in
the European theater, and again the reader must rely on Morison or the
U.S. Army histories for any knowledge of amphibious operations.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Fortunately, Admirals H. Kent Hewitt and F. J. Lowry, in a series
of articles in the United States Naval Institute Proceedings, saved the
navy from oblivion. Hewitt's articles included "The Landing in Morocco,
November 1942," 78 (November 1952): 1242-53; "Meeting the Jean Bart's
Commander," 83 (September 1957);1005; "Naval Aspects of the Sicilian
Campaign," 79 (July 1953):705-23; "The Allied Navies at Salerno:
Operation Avalanche— September 1943," 79 (September 1953) :959-76;
"Planning Operation Anvil-Dragoon," 80 (July 1954): 731-45; and "Executing
Operation Anvil-Dragoon," 80 (August 1954):896-925. Lowry wrote "The
Naval Side of the Anzio Invasion," 80 (January 1954):23-31. In addition,
George M. Elsey, "Naval Aspects of Normandy in Retrospect," in the
Eisenhower Foundation, D-Day: The Normandy Invasion in Retrospect,
pp. 170-97, described German coastal batteries, obstacles, opposition,
and U.S. naval actions. Also, there are numerous articles and books
detailing segments of the amphibious story such as naval gunfire support,
amphibious tractors, rhinos and Mulberries, beachmasters, underwater
demolition teams, salvage, and command relationships. A recent work,
J. D. Ladd, Assault from the Sea, 1939-45: The Craft, The Landings, The
Men (New York: Hippocrens Books, 1976), describes essential amphibious
v e s s e l s .
Still lacking is a book-length study of the development and
execution of amphibious warfare and of its leaders in the European
theater. The following pages are intended to fill that gap in World
War II naval historiography.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The Primary Sources
Of paramount importance to this study were Admiral Hall's
personal papers, dating from 1913 until the time of his death in 1978.
When I used the papers, they were in the admiral's possession in
Alexandria, Virginia, and were organized both chronologically and
topically. The footnotes indicate the folders as they were then titled.
The admiral bequeathed his collection to the College of William and Mary,
Williamsburg, Virginia, and no doubt a professional archivist will
reorganize and relabel the collection.
Especially useful was the admiral's voluminous incoming and
outgoing correspondence for indications of his relationships with other
military officers, of his attempts to guide and instruct those with a
lesser knowledge of amphibious warfare, of his thoughts and opinions
about naval problems, of his activities after the war, and of the views
of people writing to him.
Admiral Hall followed naval regulations and kept no diary during
World War II (or at any other time), and accurately reconstructing his
movements would have been difficult had it not been for files of all
travel orders for his entire career. These orders provided the necessary
chronology and pinpointed his whereabouts and duties for forty years.
Most other papers in the collection were topically organized and
included a welter of material pertaining to Admiral Hall's years at the
Naval War College, amphibious doctrines and practices during the war,
operation plans and orders, the Armed Forces Staff College, and post-war
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. activities such as the U,S,0. In addition, several folders of a
miscellaneous nature supplied odds and ends of information.
Lacking in the admiral.'s papers were copies of official documents
such as action reports (although there were several) and information
about the establishment of amphibious training programs in North Africa
and Great Britain. The admiral's letters of a more personal nature were
handwritten and not duplicated.
As vital as the personal papers, and to this historian far more
interesting, were numerous conversations with the admiral, both by phone
and in person. These interviews were of a question-and-answer nature,
and I have notes, which are available, on the admiral's remarks. Admiral
Hall was a gregarious, easy-going man who liked to talk about his
non-professional experiences; he was especially reticent about his own
contributions to innovative changes in amphibious warfare techniques.
There was one subject about which he showed no undue restraint: naval
gunfire support, which, he felt, had turned the tide of three of his
landings, To offset the admiral's modesty, V. Taliaferro Boatwright,
who had served as Hall's gunnery officer from the Mediterranean through
Okinawa, kindly read, corrected, and commented on the original manuscript.
In addition, I checked the admiral's statements against other sources
whenever possible and cited any discrepancies in the footnotes.
Of less importance in reconstructing Admiral Hall's story were
his office files in the Navy Flag Files Record Group, located at the
General Archives Division, National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This collection included routine office correspondence and files, many
army and navy plans and orders, information on logistics, communications,
landing craft, and message boxes. The files appeared incomplete: there
were some papers from the Eighth Amphibious Force, nothing from the
Twelfth Amphibious Group, and most documents from the Eleventh Amphibious
Force. The badly deteriorated condition of many files and their complete
lack of organization limited the usefulness of these papers.
The Operational Archives of the Naval History Division at the
Washington Navy Yard houses a well organized and readily accessible
collection of official reports and documents pertaining to World War II
naval operations, and this valuable collection must be the basis for any
study of the wartime navy, Several major groups of documents were of
special interest,
First, the war diaries, standard in any command and usually kept
by a junior staff member, recounted the important activities of the
commanding officer, his travels, his visitors, the organization of his
force, changes in staff personnel, movements of the flagship, and
assorted bits of trivia, Devoid of commentary, these factual accounts
provided an accurate chronological record of Admiral Hall's activities.
War diaries of other pertinent commanders added additional information.
When the commanding officer went into combat, the war diary was
replaced by a similar section of the action report, which gave a precise
chronological narrative. In addition, action reports usually contain
sections on materiel, communications, medical, and most importantly
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. comments and recommendations. The latter described problems and suggested
future changes in areas such as planning, staff organization, rehearsals,
the approach to the beach, debarkation, ship unloading, boat and craft
control, beach and shore difficulties, combat loading and transports,
naval gunfire support, air support, the flagship, landing craft and boat
performances, security, and command relations. Such action reports by
the force commander, supplemented by similar reports from other ships,
craft, and task units that participated in the operation, collectively
presented a comprehensive picture of any naval assault.
Still another type of document^— operation orders and plans—
provided important information on the purpose of an operation, force
organization, method of attack, pre-assault intelligence on enemy
defenses, and communications,
In addition to these standard primary sources and many other
categories of documents, the Operational Archives has an impressive
collection of personal papers of World War II naval leaders. Of value
to this study were the papers of Admirals Alan G, Kirk and Richmond
Kelly Turner. Of lesser merit was the fragmentary collection of papers
of Admiral H. Kent Hewitt.
Still another source of top'-echelon naval thinking appeared in
the memoirs provided by the Oral History Research Office of Columbia
University and by the U.S. Naval Institute, transcripts of which are at
the Operational Archives. Interviews with flag officers such as
Admirals Hall, Hewitt, Kirk, and R, L. Conolly, as well as with
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8
New York Times military editor Hanson W. Baldwin, provided insight into
the thoughts and actions of amphibious leaders. Uneven in quality, oral
histories are not specific and detailed enough to use as reliable sources
for narrative history. Rather, their value rests in the impressions and
opinions of the interviewees, who often appeared less than candid in
their statements. In other words, evidence found in the oral histories
must be checked against other sources.
Also of interest were ships' log books at the National Archives,
Washington, D.C, Reports by naval officers during the years of peace
were rather scarce, and the logs did provide a chronological record of
the activities of each ship in which Admiral Hall served prior to
World War II.
Assembling the Material
Initially written as a memoir, this study began as a combined
effort between Admiral Hall and myself. The process of melding the
information gained from source materials and from the admiral into a
historical narrative was relatively simple. I constructed the basic
story from written sources and then questioned the admiral about
particular events, people, and amphibious equipment and tactics.
Admiral Hall carefully read and freely commented on the first draft of
each chapter. The second draft was as complete and accurate as I could
make it and had the admiral's stamp of approval. The finished product
was a blending of primary and secondary sources and Admiral Hall's own
reminiscences,
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. To turn the memoir into a dissertation involved extensive
additional research in source materials and a complete rewriting of the
manuscript to meet scholarly requirements. In this revision, I have
mentioned, either in the text or the footnotes, instances in which
Admiral Hall's recollections, opinions, or reports differed from other
sources or from my own interpretations of the evidence. All analyses
and evaluations are mine. I have tried, by using the exploits of one
naval commander, to describe the evolution of amphibious warfare,
particularly in the European theater, during World War II.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER I
THE PRE-WAR SETTING
Its entrance into World War II found the United States preoccupied
with hemispheric defense and generally unprepared for offensive action to
counter Axis expansion and domination in Europe, North Africa, and the
Far East. Quickly rallying to the threat to their own safety, the
United States and Great Britain devised a strategy that required carrying
the battle directly onto enemy territory. With the marked shift in
strategic thinking came a concomitant and rapid change in military
tactics. The amphibious operation— a new and dangerous method of
attack— became the means of delivering superior military force to bear
directly against the enemy. Within a few years, success stories of the
relatively untried form of warfare came from such far-flung corners of
the world as North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, New Guinea, and Okinawa.
The Allied victory in World War II, resting heavily on the maturation
and refinement of the techniques of the amphibians, brought with it an
acceptance of the amphibious assault as a viable and daring addition to
modern warfare.
During the war, thousands of soldiers, sailors, marines, and
aviators played unsung roles in perfecting the novel form of assault,
and the officers who led them helped to pioneer the development of the
10
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amphibious attack. The experiences of one of these officers— Admiral
John Lesslie Hall, Jr.— describes part of that development. But to grasp
the radical nature of the wartime changes in amphibious tactics, equip
ment, and leadership, as well as in strategic thinking, a brief review
of these elements during the interwar years is essential.
American Strategic Thinking
Between the two World Wars, American military planners concen
trated on either continental defense or a possible naval war against
Japan. Army and then navy strategists named Britain, either alone or
allied with Japan and Mexico, as the most likely aggressor against the
United States and formulated Basic Plan Red to defend American
territory.^ Lukewarm to the Red Plan, naval planners had more
accurately predicted one probable enemy and had devised the Orange
Plans for a war against Japan. Changing and modifying the Orange Plans
during the 1920s and 1930s, the navy, at first alone and then jointly
with the army, devised a defensive strategy in the Pacific. In essence,
the Orange Plan supposed a Japanese attack on American possessions in
the Pacific, an initial holding action by garrisons on the Pacific
islands, and the fleet's fighting its way across the ocean through the
mandated Caroline and Marshall Islands to confront Japan in an all-out
William R. Braisted, "On the American Red and Red-Orange Plans, 1919-1939," in Naval Warfare in the Twentieth Century, 1900^-1945; Essays in Honour of Arthur Marder, ed. Gerald Jordan (London: Groom Helm, 1977), pp. 167-85 (hereafter cited as Jordan, Naval Warfare in the Twentieth Century).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 12
naval battle. The Orange Plan did not envision an invasion of the
2 Japanese home islands. Other joint plans of the interwar years included
the Green Plan for operations against Mexico and the Tan Plan for
American intervention in Cuba to establish a stable government and to
3 protect American and foreign interests. Territorial defense
characterized all military planning.
A change in strategic thinking followed the Munich Conference of
1938; joint planners then began to consider Germany's potential for
aggression. For the next year military strategists weighed possible
actions, by the United States alone or allied with Britain and France,
if either the Western Hemisphere or the Philippines appeared threatened.
In June 1939 army and navy planners had projected a series of five
Rainbow Plans, which again were essentially defensive in nature.^
2 Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War; A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (New York; Macmillan Publishing Co., 1973), pp. 245-46 (hereafter cited as Weigley, American Way of War). For a clear account of changing naval strategy, interwoven with world events, see John Major, "The Navy Plans for War, 1937-1941," in In Peace and War; Interpretations of American Naval History, 1775-1978, ed. Kenneth J, Hagen (Westport, Conn.; Greenwood Press, 1978), pp. 237-62 (hereafter cited as Major, "The Navy Plans for War").
3 Green Plans, serial 74^b of 13 August 1919, serial 459 of 17 January 1930, and serial 571 of 1936; Tan Plan, serial 456 of 14 November 1929, Records of Strategic Plans Division, Operational Archives, Naval History Division, Washington, D.C. (material in Operational Archives hereafter cited as OA, NHD).
^Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare: 1941-1942, in United States Army in Ivorld War II; History of the War Department (Washington; Government Printing Office, 1953), pp. 4-8, 13 (hereafter cited as Matloff and Snell, Strategic Planning, 1941-1942).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 3
With the fall of France to German armies in June 1940, Admiral
Harold R. Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, became increasingly aware of
the inadequacies of the Rainbow Plans as safeguards of Anglo-American
security. In November 1940, Stark's war planners drew up Plan D or
"Dog," which recommended a defensive holding action in the Pacific
against Japanese expansion and an American-British concentration on
offensive action in the Atlantic and in Europe to beat Germany— the most
dangerous of the Axis powers— first. This major shift in strategic
thinking quickly dominated American planning.^
To supplement the larger strategies of the Rainbow and Dog Plans
and to prevent the transfer of European colonial territories to the
Germans, military planners drew up a series of potential protective
operations such as the occupation of French-owned Martinique and
Guadeloupe and Portugal's Azores and Cape Verde Islands, Another plan
projected the occupation of northeastern Brazil to defend that country
from possible attack by Luftwaffe aircraft flying from Dakar on the west
coast of Africa to the bulge of Brazil. Following a request from.the
British in July 1941, the navy transported marines for the planned
occupation of Iceland to forestall a possible German seizure of the
^See Louis Morton, "Germany First; The Basic Concept of Allied Strategy in World War II," in Command Decisions, ed. Kent Roberts Green field (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1960), pp. 11-48, for a discussion of this important change in strategy (this volume hereafter cited as Greenfield, Command Decisions). Major, "The Navy Plans for War," p. 253, called Plan Dog "the most important single document" in evolving strategy for war.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 14
Danish possession.^
When the United States officially entered the war, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt acted quickly to cement the tacit American alliance
with Britain. The two nations had been moving steadily, although with
some mutual mistrust and antagonism, toward collaboration on strategic
plans since the president had sent Captain Royal E. Ingersoll, USN, on
a mission to Britain in late 1937 to discuss naval cooperation.^ In
June 1939 Captain Alan G. Kirk, USN, became naval attache to Britain and
for eighteen months worked with limited success to facilitate Anglo-
American exchange of technical information on radar and bombsights.
Another naval mission, headed by the assistant Chief of Naval Operations,
Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley, spent several months in London in the
summer of 1940 to assess Britain's ability to withstand any Axis invasion
Q and to gather information about future Anglo-American strategic planning.
While Ghormley was in London, he assisted the Bailey Committee,
established by the British to investigate means of naval collaboration,
in preparing its recommendations. The Bailey Report became the basis for
^Plans in Records of Amphibious Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, 1941- 1944, OA, NHD. "
^Memoes from Royal E. Ingersoll to Chief of Naval Operations describing the conversations in Records of the Strategic Plans Division, Box 116, OA, NHD.
Q James R. Leutze, Bargaining for Supremacy; Anglo-American Naval Collaboration, 1937-1941 (Chapel Hill; University of North Carolina Press, 1977) has a good description of these less-than-cooperative attempts at understanding (hereafter cited as Leutze, Bargaining for Supremacy).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 15
later British-American staff talks. In November 1940 Stark requested
the Admiralty to send a mission to Washington to discuss possible
9 cooperation.
This mission arrived in January, and British and American military
staffs held a series of meetings from 29 January to 29 March 1941. These
American-British Conversations (ABC) resulted in a report (ABC-One)
outlining basic strategy for the defeat of the Axis. The eventual
coalition plan combined ABC-One and a new Rainbow-Five and maintained
the "Germany first" strategy. Projected actions included the use of
economic pressure, the initiation of a bombing offensive, efforts to get
Italy out of the war, raids and minor actions against the Axis, the
support of resistance elements in occupied countries, a build-up of armed
strength for an offensive against Germany, and the capture of positions
from which to launch such an offensive.
More specifically, the United States assumed the responsibility
for protecting the territories of Latin America and of the Associated
Powers in the western Atlantic. In addition to providing defensive
garrisons for British possessions or areas of responsibility in the
Western Hemisphere, the U.S. Army would send a regiment to aid in the
defense of Great Britain. The U,S. Navy was to protect sea communications
and coastal shipping in the western Atlantic, to escort convoys in
^"Anglo-American Planning for Naval Cooperation, June 1940- December 1941," pp. 5-11, Records of Naval Forces Europe, series II, folder 9, OA, NHD (material from these records hereafter cited as Comnaveu)
10 Wtloff and Snell, Strategic Planning, 1941-1942, pp. 32, 43^46,
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British home waters, and to raid Axis shipping in the Mediterranean. In
the Pacific, the United States would safeguard sea communications and
would defend Midway, Johnson, Palmyra, Samoa, and Guam. It was also to
prepare to take control of the Caroline and Marshall Islands area. In
the Far East, the army would defend but not reinforce the Philippine
coasts ; the navy would help in the defense of Allied territories and
would raid enemy sea communications.^^ But the United States still had
not considered large-scale amphibious operations against any continent.
These amphibious commitments by the still-neutral American
strategists received a severe jolt when Roosevelt and Winston Churchill,
prime minister of Britain, met at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, in August
1941. British planners, now certain of an American ally, advocated a
blockade of German-held coastal areas, heavy air strikes against Germany,
an intensive propaganda campaign, and, most importantly, closing the ring
around Hitler’s Europe by a series of amphibious landings along the
periphery— such as in North Africa. In contrast, American military
strategists, advocating a massive assault against Germany itself, were
reluctant to divert time, men, and materiel to peripheral actions. The
opposing views opened a dispute on basic coalition strategy that would
12 last for several years.
lllbid., pp, 44-45,
12 Samuel Eliot Morison, Strategy and Compromise (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1958), pp, 23-24 (hereafter cited as Morison, Strategy and Compromise). For a thorough account of the meetings, see Theodore Wilson, The First Summit: Roosevelt and Churchill at Placentia Bay, 1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1969).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 17
The only concrete decision made at the Atlantic Conference was
for the U.S. Navy to escort British as well as American ships in the
convoys in the north Atlantic. Believing that Germany should not be
allowed to win the Battle of the Atlantic, Roosevelt committed the navy
to a "shoot on sight" policy after the German U-boat attack on the
destroyer Greer in September 1941 and used the assault on the American
13 vessel to justify his convoy policy. Other incidents quickly followed.
Soon after the official American entry into the war, Churchill
and his military planners came to Washington to discuss possible moves
against the Axis with Roosevelt and the American strategists. At the
Arcadia meetings of December 1941-January 1942, Roosevelt and Churchill
maintained the Germany-first principle by agreeing to a holding operation
in the Pacific and a concentration of Allied resources and might against
Germany and Italy, The Allies also discussed the possibility of an
invasion of northwest Africa. A unified but short-lived Australian-
British-Dutch-American (ABDA) command for the southwest Pacific and
southeast Asia came into existence.Another offshoot of the Arcadia
Conference was the formation of the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) , com
prised of members of the American and British Joint Chiefs of Staff;
these men would be responsible for the subsequent planning of coalition
13 Patrick Abbazia, Mr. Roosevelt’s Navy; The Private War of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, 1939-1942 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1975) has a detailed description of these prewar incidents (hereafter cited as Abbazia, Roosevelt’s Navy).
14 Matloff and Snell, Strategic Planning, 1941-1942, pp. 99-124.
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warfare.
The question that primarily concerned the strategists during the
early months of 1942 was how and where to begin to fight back against the
Axis. While American and British leaders wrangled over the advantages
of an early cross-channel versus a peripheral assault, Roosevelt insisted
on some type of ground operation with American participation in 1942.
As the dispute about the location of the Allied attack continued, one
fact became abundantly clear: a relatively untried form of warfare— the
amphibious assault— would be the method of taking the battle across the
seas and onto enemy territories. There seemed no other way to reverse
the process of Axis expansion.
The Development of Amphibious Warfare Between the Wars
Before World War II, amphibious warfare had played only a slight
role in the strategic planning or modern operations of the American armed
forces. The complex and dangerous amphibious assault consisted of an
attack launched from the sea against an enemy shore by naval and landing
forces. The assault might include the preparation, by bombardment, of
the landing area and the support of ground forces by naval and air ele^
ments. Such an assault could be a small-scale raid, or the capture of
an advanced base, or the beginning of a larger land operation; all types
would occur in World War 11.^^
^^Holland M, Smith, "The Development of Amphibious Tactics in the U.S. Navy," Marine Corps Gazette 30 (June 1946):17-18, describes the three major types of amphibious attacks (material from this ten-part series hereafter cited as Smith, "Amphibious Tactics," MCG, and appropriate volume and page numbers).
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There had been only one major amphibious landing in the twentieth
century: the notorious British attack on Gallipoli in 1915. Hoping to
break the stalemate in the European war by capturing Constantinople and
opening the Black Sea to provide supplies to enable Russia to sustain
her second front in the east, the British sent warships to open the
Dardanelles, After spending a futile month trying to blast Turkish
defenses with naval guns, the British switched tactics and decided on an
amphibious assault on the peninsula of Gallipoli. The attack force made
nearly every mistake possible, beginning with inadequate staff planning
in London. The daylight landings allowed the Turkish defenders to inflict
heavy casualties; there was no rehearsal before the invasion, which
caused loss of life and technical errors; a lack of forward observers to
spot prelanding naval gunfire reduced the effectiveness of the bombards
ment; there were no gunboats in close support of the assault force;
there was a shortage of landing boats; the commanding general ashore
failed to take advantage of an early opportunity to move toward a major
goal, Kalid Bahr; and no one had informed the ground troops of their
first objectives. After a half million British and French troops became
bogged down on Gallipoli, the British called for a withdrawal, which, in
contrast to the assault landings, was conducted efficiently.^^ The
failure of the Gallipoli campaign discredited the concept of large-scale
amphibious assaults for many years.
16 Elmer B. Potter and Chester W. Nimitz, eds.. Sea Power: A Naval History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1960), pp. 412-31 (hereafter cited as Potter and Nimitz, Sea Power).
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In spite of its many errors, the Gallipoli episode did produce
two Innovations that presaged World War II equipment. Artificial harbors
used at Belles hinted at the Mulberries at Normandy, and armored landing
boats with bow ramps foreran ramped landing craft such as the Landing
Ship Tank (LST).^^
Long before Gallipoli, the U,S. Navy had given some thought to
amphibious warfare. Study of seizing advanced bases began at Newport in
1901, and the navy established a permanent Advanced Base School at New
London in 1910 and moved it to Philadelphia the next year. A few voices
spoke out on the need for amphibious equipment. In the mid-1920s
Admiral Robert E. Coontz, commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet, and later
Chief of Naval Operations, emphasized the need to develop special craft
to land troops. In the wake of Gallipoli, studies of amphibious cam-
18 paigns began at the Naval War College. While Rear Admiral William V.
Pratt was president of the college (1925-27), classes conducted war games
utilizing amphibious concepts, but this practice stopped when Pratt left.
The only attention amphibious warfare then received consisted of a
marine lecture on the topic^^ until the college began teaching advanced
^^Ibid.
18 George Carroll Dyer, The Amphibians Came to Conquer; The Story of Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, 2 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1972), 1:207 (hereafter cited as Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer); idem, "Naval Amphibious Landmarks,'' United States Naval Institute Proceedings 92 (August 1966):51, 55 (hereafter cited as Dyer, "Amphibious Landmarks").
19 Weigley, American Way of War, p. 264,
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base problems in the early 1930s. Naval interest in amphibious concepts,
except its role in landing a small contingent of marines such as in the
Orange, Green, and Tan Plans, remained marginal. Reinforcing the basic
belief that a successful large-scale assault from the sea was virtually
impossible, a naval captain wrote a six-part series that appeared in
the United States Naval Institute Proceedings— a journal widely read by
naval officers. The articles demonstrated the difficulties and disad
vantages of seaborne invasions and remained pessimistic about any future
20 operations.
In contrast, the U.S. Marines, by the nature of their duties, had
always been vitally concerned with amphibious warfare; and their first
such operation occurred in 1776 when the Continental navy launched a
successful amphibious assault against a British fort at New Providence
21 in the Bahamas. Subsequently, the marines remained in the forefront
of the evolution of amphibious thinking, but the idea of large-scale
joint navy-marine actions grew slowly. Indeed, marine thinking focused
on the short-term seizure of small islands. After the Gallipoli fiasco
of World War I, a few officers still stressed the importance of the
amphibious art. For example, in 1919 Major Earl H. Ellis, USMC, lectured
on methods of capturing Japanese bases in a campaign across the Pacific
20 W. S. Pye, "Joint Army and Navy Operations," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 50 (December 1924) : 1963-76; 51 (January 1925):1-14; 51 (February 1925): 233-45 ; 51 (March 1925): 386-99 ; 51 (April 1925); 589-99 ; 51 (June 1925): 975-1000.
Zlgmith, "Amphibious Tactics," i^G 30 (July 1946) ;27.
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(an integral part of the Orange Plan); and in 1920 Major General
Charles G. Morton, USA, wrote in the Infantry Journal that landing
22 operations would be essential in the future.
In 1921 the advanced base force at Quantico became the East
Coast Expeditionary Force, and within four years it included infantry,
artillery, and auxiliary troops. A similar force in San Diego became
the West Coast Expeditionary Force. The marines conducted landing
operations with the fleet in 1922 and 1924 and participated in the
23 army-navy exercise of 1925. Because they were involved in China,
Nicaragua, and Haiti— the latter two were amphibious landings:— the marines
held no further practices with the fleet for the next six years. They
did, however, begin to develop some literature on landing operations.
There were orders for and reports of operations, a few articles in
service journals, student studies, and, by the early 1930s, the advanced
base problems taught at the Naval War College. Some marine studies
dealt with the necessary amount of naval gunfire support, or with ship
24 loading, or with the capacities of ships' boats.
The 1927 directive of the Joint Board of the Army and Navy, Joint
O O Weigley, American Way of War, p. 254.
23jeter A. Isely and Philip A. Crowl, The U.S. Marines and Amphib ious War; Its Theory, and Its Practice in the Pacific (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 29-32 (hereafter cited as Isely and Crowl, U.S. Marines and Amphibious War).
^^A. T. Mason, "Special Monograph on Amphibious Warfare," chap. 1, pp. 8-10, World War II Command File, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Mason, "Amphibious Warfare").
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Action of the Army and Navy, established the landing force role of the
marines: they would execute landing operations to support the fleet in
the initial seizure and defense of advanced bases. The Navy Department's
General Order 241, of 8 December 1933, established the Fleet Marine
Force and made it a part of the U.S. Fleet. Now there were provisions
for joint navy-marine operations but no text explaining either the theory
or practice of landing operations. The Quantico Marine Corps School had
appointed a special committee in 1931 to compile such a guide, and the
school mimeographed its Tentative Landing Operations Manual three years
later. The Chief of Naval Operations accepted the manual as a guide for
navy-marine landings, and the navy published it in 1935, with the same
title. That text subsequently underlay all amphibious concepts in the
American armed forces and became the basis for the navy’s Fleet Training
Publication 167 (1938) and the army's Field Manual 31-5 (1942).^^
To put these theories into action, the navy, the Fleet Marine
Force, and sometimes the army, conducted a series of fleet landing
exercises (FLEX) between 1935 and 1941. Taking place in either the
Caribbean or in the San Clemente area, these joint exercises provided
experience and revealed the shortcomings of landing force techniques.
FLEX One (1935), held in the Culebra area, experimented with naval gun
fire and air support of the landing force for virtually the first time.
25 Frank 0. Hough, Verle E. Ludwig, and Henry I. Shaw, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, vol. 1 of History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1956), pp. 11-14 (hereafter cited as Hough et al.. Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal).
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Ships' boats unsatisfactorily handled the ship-to-shore movement, but more
useful experience came from both air and shore observation and direction
of naval gunfire and from radio communication between ships and planes.
This exercise concentrated on operations ashore, not the ship-to-shore
assa ul t.
A year later the more elaborate FLEX Two took place in the same
region and placed added emphasis on the ship-to-shore movement. Ships'
boats again carried the marines to the beaches, but there were innova-'
tions: cargo nets rather than ladders facilitated the transfer of troops
from ships to boats, and the assault forces tried firing guns of the
landing boats to support the troops during the actual landings. Among
the lessons learned from the exercise were that combatant ships should
not be used as transports because of limited space for troops and an
inadequate number of landing boats, that the use of carrier-borne
aircraft for additional support would vastly improve amphibious opera
tions, and that surface-bursting rather than armor-piercing shells were
better for routine shore bombardment.^^ High-capacity surface-bursting
projectiles were designed for widespread destruction upon impact;
armor-piercing shells, with a lower explosive capacity, were meant to
penetrate heavy fortifications.
In 1937 the army participated on a limited scale in the
operations of FLEX Three in the vicinity of San Clemente, Parachute
26 Isely and Crowl, U.S. Marines and Amphibious War, pp. 46-48; Smith, "Amphibious Tactics," MCG 30 (September 1946):43-44.
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drops and shore bombardment in support of the landing force were used
for the first time. Although the participants tried out three
experimental landing boats, ships’ boats continued to transport the
assault troops from ship to shore and demonstrated again the need for
27 fast, maneuverable landing craft. Some army troops took part in FLEX
Four, held the following year at Culebra. The exercise showed that
naval gunfire in conjunction with landings was improving. The landing
force also experimented with four landing craft and a self-propelled
tank lighter.
More refinements came in 1939 with FLEX Five at Culebra, and
these exercises demonstrated the soundness of basic amphibious doctrine
although there were not enough transports, cargo ships, or marines for
the landing. In addition to regular ships’ boats, the assault force
tried out nineteen experimental landing craft, including a Higgins
29 boat and rubber boats, and used two tank lighters and an artillery
lighter. The next year FLEX Six spotlighted the major deficiencies as
lack of transports, landing craft, personnel, and amphibious equipment.
The army and navy differed about which service was to provide transports
and landing craft and about who should control the combat loading of
27 Isely and Crowl, U.S. Marines and Amphibious War, pp. 52-53; Smith, "Amphibious Tactics," MCG 30 (September 1946):44-45.
28 Mason, "Amphibious Warfare," chap. 1, p. 61.
29 A thirty-six-foot plywood boat with a low square bow. Powered by gasoline or diesel engines, the boats were the forerunners of the LCP(L)s.
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transports.^®
The largest of these amphibious maneuvers, FLEX Seven, involved
both the army and the marines and took place in the Culebra-Vieques
area in February 1941, and assault transports came into use for the
first time. These exercises revealed many weaknesses in air support,
ordnance, ship-to-shore communication, combat loading, and the logistics
involved with full-scale supplies. At that time, no one thought of the
large-scale requirements of shore and beach parties, lighterage, and
organization in the transport area. A major shortcoming continued to
31 be a lack of adequate transports and landing craft.
Another important deficiency in FLEX Seven, as well as in the
earlier exercises, lay in fire support. The old naval tradition that
ships cannot successfully engage shore fortifications without inviting
destruction prevented the warships from closing the shore for a
deliberate, short-range, sustained bombardment. Instead, naval gunfire
support consisted of brief, long-range firing while maneuvering at
high speeds— none of which was likely to destroy defenses in a target
area. In addition, the navy had not made any changes in the ammunition
provided to warships, although the FLEX exercises had demonstrated that
surface-bursting bombardment ammunition was adequate for most land
®®Smith, "Amphibious Tactics, MCG 30 (September 1946):46-47; Chester Wardlow, The Transportation Corps: Responsibilities, Organiza tion, and Operations, in Unites States Army in World War II : The Technical Services (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1951), p. 144 (hereafter cited as Wardlow, Transportation Corps).
31 1 ,Mason, "Amphibious Warfare," chap. 1, p. 77.
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targets and that armor-piercing shells were effective against masonry
emplacements. Ammunition allowances were generally insufficient for
large, sustained attacks. With the combination of naval gunfire tactics
and of often unsuitable ammunition, fire support only succeeded in
area neutralization rather than careful, deliberate destruction of
32 specific targets that threatened the landing force.
Reflecting some of the lessons learned from the series of fleet
landing exercises. Change Number One of F T P 167 appeared in May 1941.
Other additions and modifications to basic amphibious doctrine were
issued after actual experience in war refined the concepts and
execution of joint amphibious operations.
Additional joint maneuvers were held at New River, North Caro
lina, in August 1941, and the landing craft turned in a better
performance. Although this was the most realistic operation to date,
it, too, demonstrated many deficiencies of materiel and execution,
including difficulties with shore and beach parties. As a result.
Admiral Ernest J. King, commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet, evaluated
the readiness of the force as poor because of inefficient organization,
lack of proper equipment, and inadequate capacity and facilities on
33 transports. And Pearl Harbor lay only four months in the future.
32 Hough et al., Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, pp. 16-17; Donald M. Weller, "Salvo— Splash! The Development of Naval Gunfire Support in World War II," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 80 (August 1954):845 (hereafter cited as Weller, "Salvo— Splash!").
33 Wardlow, Transportation Corps, p, 147.
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After the war began, JANEX One, held in January 1942 on the
south shore of the Chesapeake Bay, was the largest joint army-navy
exercise. Many naval officers thought it was a complete failure, and
army criticism was scathing; the navy's transports, combat ships, and
aircraft were inadequate, and ships had not practiced shore bombardment
for a year. In addition, naval flyers did not cooperate with ground
forces, and the navy could not land the assault forces on the proper
beaches. From the navy's viewpoint, some good came out of the experi
ence, however. It led to the navy's assuming command of transports
during an amphibious assault, thus unifying the amphibious force
commander's control of the naval attack force; and, shortly afterward,
separate amphibious forces came into existence.®^
Not only had the JANEX One exercise in January 1942 made clear
the necessity for such permanent forces, but evolving Allied strategy
called for an efficient amphibious capability. The following month
Admiral King ordered the establishment of an amphibious force in both
the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets. Each of these new forces would be
commanded by a flag officer and would have covering forces, transports,
and trained amphibious troops. The old Amphibious Corps, Atlantic Fleet,
with a marine general commanding the troops, became the Amphibious Force,
O C headed by an admiral, and included both naval and troop components.
Mason, "Amphibious Warfare," chap. 1, pp. 90-91; Kent Roberts Greenfield, Robert R. Palmer, and Bell I. Wiley, The Organization of Ground Combat Troops, in United States Army in World War II; The Army Ground Forces (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1947), pp. 89-91 (hereafter cited as Greenfield et al.. Ground Combat Troops)
35 Mason, "Amphibious Warfare," chap. 2, p. 12.
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Rear Admiral H. Kent Hewitt succeeded Rear Admiral Roland M. Brainard
as commander of the Atlantic amphibious force in April 1942. A similar
organization took place in the Pacific Fleet, with Vice Admiral Wilson
Brown's commanding that amphibious force.
When Hewitt assumed command of the Atlantic amphibious force,
he instigated a training program that provided instruction in the vital
essentials of amphibious landings. Men in his command learned how to
handle landing craft and boats and support craft, to reconnoiter and
identify beaches, and to tackle shore and beach party duties. Addi
tional instruction included communications, combat loading of ships,
and transport quartermaster duties. Concentrated in the Chesapeake Bay,
Hewitt's force also held landing exercises and gunfire support prac-
36 tices. In April the army replaced the marines as the landing force
in Hewitt's command, and the admiral ostensibly trained both army and
navy units for amphibious assaults.
The army arrived later than the navy or marines on the scene
of practical joint operations, but it had been developing its own
doctrines during the 1930s. Joint Overseas Expeditions, published in
1929 and revised in 1933, became the basic directive and got its major
36 The Administrative History of the Eighth Fleet, pp. 3-4, World War II Command File, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as History of the Eighth Fleet); "United States Naval Administration in World War II; Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet; Amphibious Training Command," l;chap. 2, pp. 38-40; chap. 7, p. 24 (this unpublished series in the NHD Library hereafter cited as "Administrative History," and title of volume ; this volume cited as "Administrative History; Cinclant, Amphibious Training Command"),
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concepts and doctrines from Marine Corps thinking. The Joint Board
issued Joint Action of the Army and Navy in 1935. In June 1941 the
Command and General Staff School, responding to War Department orders,
issued Landing Operations on Hostile Shores (FM 31-5). Based heavily
on the navy's FTP 167 of 1938 and the earlier Marine Corps' Tentative
Landing Operations Manual, the publication recognized the army's major
37 role in joint operations on foreign shores.
Prior to 1939, the army's only amphibious training consisted of
a few engineers who had been taught the use and handling of small boats.
That winter Major General Frank Keating began rudimentary training of
O O the Third Division at Fort Lewis, Washington. By June 1940 the First
and Third Infantry Divisions started more formalized training, and a
few months later the War Department General Staff organized the
emergency expeditionary forces. Soon the First Division began to pre
pare for amphibious operations in the Caribbean. In the summer of
1941, the First Infantry Division and the First Marine Division became
the Joint Training Force, which later merged into the Amphibious
Force, Atlantic Fleet. Shortly afterward, the Third Infantry Division
and the Second Marine Division became the second Joint Training Force
and eventually formed the core of the Amphibious Force, Pacific Fleet.
Axis successes in late 1941 and early 1942 and the emerging Allied
37 Mason, "Amphibious Warfare," chap. 1, pp. 13-14, 21-25.
38 "Administrative History; Cinclant, Amphibious Training Command," l;5-9,
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strategy sparked more interest in army training. By the summer of
1942, the army had established the Amphibious Training Command and the
Engineer Amphibian Command, both at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts. The
latter group trained boat crews and provided for the organization of
beaches, the evacuation of the wounded and prisoners, the supply
buildups, and soon added men for signal, medical, ordnance, quarter
master, and boat maintenance. In addition to training troops for
seaborne operations, the army also began ordering landing boats for its
own transports and started developing equipment such as the amphibian
truck (DUKW) .
The overlapping and often ambiguous duplication of effort by
the army and navy generated numerous problems. Still not clearly
established was the assignment of duties such as the manning of boats,
combat loading and control of transports, and training of troops for
amphibious operations. Equally as important, there was no precise
definition of command relationships between the services, and the failure
to reconcile two prevailing views regarding joint action would plague
landing operations throughout World War II, especially in the European
theater where the navy worked with the army rather than with the marines.
Some upper echelon commanders believed in component command organization,
in which combat units remained under the command of their respective
®®Wardlow, Transportation Corps, p. 145; Greenfield et al,. Ground Combat Troops, pp. 85-86; Roland G. Ruppenthal, Logistical Sup port of the Armies in United States Army in World War II; The European Theater of Operations (Washington, D,C,; Government Printing Office, 1953),1;329-30 (hereafter cited as Ruppenthal, Logistical Support).
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services; others accepted the task force theory, in which a unified
command oversaw the entire force necessary for an operation.^® Disagree
ments between adherents of both concepts would hamper the smooth
development and execution of amphibious operations.
For the navy, the problem of getting troops from ships onto
foreign shores proved troublesome. Well aware of the landing craft
difficulties, the navy had begun testing experimental craft for landing
the marines in 1936, but limited funds during those "neutrality" years
prevented extensive research until 1940. In January 1937, the Secretary
of the Navy established the Continuing Board for the Development of
Landing Boats for Training in Landing Operations, and the commander in
chief, U.S. Fleet, set up another board to oversee the use and testing
of landing craft. These two boards supervised the construction of the
assorted landing craft tested in FLEX Five. In addition, the Chief of
Naval Operations ordered training programs for the boat crews of the
landing craft in 1940 and 1941.^^
In September 1940 the navy adopted Andrew Higgins's Eureka and
sometimes modified it with a ramp. An important innovation, the ramp
allowed the rapid debarkation of troops and supplies at the beach. The
Higgins craft was the forerunner of the LCP(L) (Landing Craft Personnel,
®W. H. P. Blandy, "Command Relations^in Amphibious Warfare," . United States Naval Institute Proceedings 77 (June 1951):573 (hereafter cited as Blandy, "Command Relations").
^^Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, 1:205-6; idem, "Amphibious Landmarks," pp. 52-53.
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Large), the LCP(R) (Landing Craft Personnel, Ramped), and the LCVP
(Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel). The navy had difficulty developing
an adequate tank lighter but finally chose a Higgins fifty-footer,
42 which was the prototype of the LCM (Landing Craft, Mechanized).
Responding to a need for a rescue vehicle in the Florida Everglades,
the Donald Roebling shipbuilders had developed an amphibian tractor by
the mid-1930s, and this "alligator" would provide the answer to the
problem of crossing the coral reefs off the Pacific islands. The navy
ordered two hundred amphibian tractors in 1940, and the next year the
"alligators" went into service as LVT-ls (Landing Vehicle Tracked). A
model of this craft with turrets mounting .30 and .50-inch machine guns
(LVT-2) became a seagoing tank and was serviceable in 1943.^^
Although the navy was in the process of testing and ordering
these craft, preparations for amphibious operations did not have
highest priority with the naval command in Washington. A joint report
by the army chief of staff and the Chief of Naval Operations,
11 September 1941, listed the production requirements necessary to win
a war but did not refer to amphibious shipping or landing craft.
^^Hough et al.. Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, pp. 28-32.
^®Smith, "Amphibious Tactics," MCG 30 (October 1946):44; J. D. Ladd, Assault from the Sea, 1939-45: The Craft, The Landings, The Men (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1976), p. 150 (hereafter cited as Ladd, Assault from the Sea). Ladd gives thorough coverage to the war time development of landing craft and assault ships.
^^ason, "Amphibious Warfare," chap. 1, p. 83. Abbazia, Roosevelt’s Navy, p. 26, states that the navy’s "inertia" in improving equipment later caused many deaths on landing beaches and "was perhaps the darkest sin of the peacetime Navy."
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These vessels fell into the category of "auxiliaries." A few weeks
after the war began, the United States had about 875 landing craft and
53 amphibious tractors, all under fifty feet in length. Another 1,243
landing craft and 907 amphibious tractors were on order. Construction
of the British models— LSD (Landing Ship Dock), LST (Landing Ship Tank),
and LCT (Landing Craft Tank)— as well as the vital AGC (Auxiliary
General Communications— the amphibious command ship), had not yet
45 begun. The United States could not have undertaken more than minor
amphibious operations with these limited craft; nevertheless, the navy
had moved toward providing the essential amphibious vessels.
Still another type of ship indispensable in carrying an invasion
to foreign shores was the transport. On war's eve the navy had sixteen
APs (large amphibious transports), seven AKs (amphibious cargo vessels),
and six APDs (destroyer hull transports). Fortunately, the Joint
Staff planners shifted their priorities by March 1942 because of the
strategic policies of the United States and her British ally. Whether
peripherally or directly, the Allies intended to strike offensively at
the Axis that year, and amphibious assaults would be the method of
contesting Axis control in Europe or North Africa. Consequently, the
joint planners urged speed in the production of all craft necessary for
any potential large-scale invasions.
^^Mason, "Amphibious Warfare," chap. 2, pp. 52-53; Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, 1:208-10.
^^Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, 1:212.
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Altogether, so far as amphibious warfare was concerned, the
United States had followed its customary practice of declaring war
before preparing for it Adequate theories and doctrines had been
devised by the marines, the navy, and fir illy the army in the decade
before World War II; but, stung by the memories of Gallipoli and
dominated by officers clinging to the idea that war at sea involved
a confrontation between battle lines, the navy had moved reluctantly
into practical application nf those amphibious theories. In the 1930s,
the series of FLEX exercises provided experii-i: ce in joint operations
but did not anticipate the scale and complexity of World War II opera
tions. The navy reacted slowly to the lessons learned from the FLEX
landings. Beginning in 1936 the navy did push the development of new
and more versatile landing craft, and the boards established the
following year focused attention on the deficiencies in craft used for
ship-to-shore movements. But it took the outbreak of war in Europe and
the potential involvement of the United States in a two-ocean struggle
to coax Congress into providing funds for naval construction, and more
time elapsed before joint planners acknowledged the possible large role
of amphibians.
In early 19^2 the armed forces could only have launched small-
scale amphibious operations such as the seizure of advanced bases.
Such capability refl'rc/d American strategic needs and plans during
the interwar years. No larger assault was possible because, in addi
tion to a shortage of trained forces, the services lacked the necessary
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organization, command relationships and procedures, equipment, supplies,
landing craft, weapons, air support, and naval gunfire support.
The Background of an Amphibious Commander
Since amphibious preparation occupied a small place in the
prewar U.S. Navy, it is hardly surprising that naval officers seldom
encountered instruction or experience that was directly related to
amphibious practices. Admiral Hall's early life and career mirrored
the general trend in naval duties and responsibilities before the
Second World War.
Born on 11 April 1891 in Williamsburg, Virginia, Hall spent his
childhood years in the quiet southern town. The son of a professor of
English and history at the College of William and Mary, Hall was the
second of four children. Inspired by seeing part of President Theodore
Roosevelt's Great White Fleet at the international celebration commem
orating the tricentennial of the settlement of Jamestown, Hall broke
off his studies at the college and entered the Naval Academy in June
1909.
During his four years at Annapolis, Hall followed the standard
curriculum of academic studies and summer cruises. He also enthusi
astically took part in the academy's athletic program and lettered in
football, basketball, and baseball. As a tribute to his sportman's
abilities, he received the Naval Athletic Association's sword for
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excellence in athletics.
After his commissioning on 7 June 1913, Hall’s subsequent duties
over the next twenty-four years followed the typical naval pattern of
varied sea and shore assignments. He temporarily commanded the
destroyer Schenck in 1920, commanded another destroyer, the Childs,
from December 1928 until May 1930, and the coastal gunboat Asheville
from early 1935 until April 1936. He then commanded the fifth destroyer
squadron of the Asiatic Fleet until March 1937,^^ Through his various
assignments. Hall gained the rounded knowledge and experience required
of a mid-level officer and had advanced through the ranks at a normal
speed.
An important change in Commander Hall's career occurred when
he began the senior course at the Naval War College in July 1937.
Classwork covered both the conduct and the background of naval war
fare, and practical and demonstrative exercises provided operational
information. Although presentations included a Marine Corps landing
force problem and a study of the battle of Gallipoli, there was no
^Information on Hall's life through 1913 is based on a series of interviews between the admiral and the author, 19, 26, and 31 January, 2 and 3 February, and 11 March 1977.
^^Hall's activities during these years can be traced by items in Orders and Travel:1913-1937 files. Papers of John Lesslie Hall, Jr., College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia (hereafter cited as JLH Papers). Additional information is from log books of the U.S.S. Schenck, 30 October 1919-31 December 1920; U.S.S. Asheville, 1 January-31 December 1935, 1 January-31 December 1936; U.S.S. Peary, 1 January-31 December 1936, 1 January-31 December 1937, Record Group 24, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (log books hereafter cited with name of ship, date, NA, RG 24).
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further concentration on the concepts of amphibious warfare.
On the utilitarian level, students had to solve a number of
quick-decision problems and six larger tactical and strategical opera
tional problems simulating actual conditions that a commander or staff
member might face. The comments of the instructors clarified and
sharpened the students' ability to estimate a situation and to draw up
battle plans and appropriate orders. Captain Richmond Kelly Turner,
head of the strategy section, offered many useful suggestions on Hall's
problems papers and wrote on the back of Hall's fifth paper, "From a
technical viewpoint, I congratulate you on one of the best orders I
have seen here at the College, If, when I am in a difficult position,
I can get you to write my orders, I will be delighted."^® Under
Turner's tutelage. Hall learned the valuable lesson of writing orders
by first describing the operation's desired effect— the complete pic
ture— and then adding the operational methods necessary to achieve that
goal. After writing the papers, the class discussed the solutions to
the problems, and the accompanying war games and chart maneuvers were
the most interesting and ultimately the most useful part of the
49 Based on Prospectus of the Naval War College Courses: Senior and Junior, 1937-38 file, JLH Papers (hereafter cited as Prospectus and the date).
^^NWC— Operation Problems file, JLH Papers. Turner's praise is noteworthy, for a recent historian, Thomas B. Buell, The Quiet Warrior : A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (Boston; Little, Brown & Co,, 1974), p. 72, described Turner as "undoubtedly the greatest teacher of naval strategy since Mahan." Spruance headed the Operations Department at the NWC in 1937-38. (Buell's book hereafter cited as Buell, Quiet W a r r i o r ) .
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strategy classes.
At the end of Hall's year as a student at the college, he became
an instructor in the strategy section. He believed that in many ways
his tour as an instructor in, and then head of, the strategy section
proved to be more beneficial than his student year. Members of the
staff gave presentations on the topics of study, and the strategy
instructors devised problems for the students. Involving nations that
could possibly become enemies, war games and chart maneuvers lent
familiarity to strange places that became scenes of later operations.
In these games the staff used carrier-based aircraft on a scale some
times larger than that actually employed during World War II and
anticipated the expanded use of equipment such as floating drydocks
52 that were still in the early stages of development and manufacture.
Most important for his future wartime duties, the work in the
strategy section gave Hall a feeling of assurance and confidence.
Preparing many campaign, movement, and operation plans or orders and
reviewing the problem solutions of the officer students provided
practice and training for his work with large joint and combined staffs
during World War II. Hall always felt that his years at the Naval War
^^JLH interview, 19 January 1977.
52 NWC— Lectures and Presentations, 1939-40 file; Prospectus, 1938-39 and 1939-40 file; Staff Presentations by J. L. Hall, Jr., file, all in JLH Papers; "Columbia University Oral History Research Office Interviews with Admiral John Lesslie Hall, Jr., 1963," pp. 91-94, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as JLH Oral History),
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53 College marked the turning point of his career.
After Hall's tour of duty as head of the strategy section ended,
he assumed command of the Arkansas of the fifth battleship division of
the Atlantic Fleet, on 3 June 1940, and rose to the rank of captain a
few weeks later. While captain of the Arkansas, Hall got a preview of
future operations when his ship participated in FLEX Seven in February
1941. During the exercise, the fleet conducted maneuvers, launched
aircraft, and simulated main battery gunfire against shore targets in
support of the landing force operations.
Within the next few months the possibility of American-escorted
convoys became more of a reality, and Admiral King sent Hall to confer
with Canadian and British officials. King knew that the United States
would shortly take over convoy escorting, and Rear Admiral David
LeBreton, soon to command the battleships of the Atlantic Fleet, would
assume the responsibility. During the week of 8-16 April, Hall traveled
to Ottawa and talked with the Canadians and then to Halifax and met
with Admiral Sir Barham-Carter, who was in charge of trans-oceanic
convoy duty. They discussed the mechanics of the United States' taking
over the escort operations.
^^JLH Oral History, pp. 92-93; JLH interview, 19 January 1977.
^^Log Book, U.S.S. Arkansas, 1 January-31 December 1941, NA, RG 24; supra, p. 26.
^^Adm. Ernest J. King to JLH, 4 April 1941, Correspondence: October 1937-October 1941 file, JLH Papers; JLH interview, 19 January 1977.
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After this trip Hall became acting chief of staff to LeBreton,
who organized Task Force Nineteen, the first task force of World War II,
and landed the First Marine Brigade in Iceland. Although the United
States was not officially involved in the war, any potential Axis
occupation of Iceland posed a threat to shipping from the Western
Hemisphere along the northern convoy route to Great Britain. After the
Germans overran Denmark in April 1940, the British quickly occupied
Iceland with 25,000 troops. More beleaguered as the European war con
tinued, Britain decided to pull her troops back home, and Roosevelt
agreed to relieve part of Britain's forces in Iceland— such a move had
been discussed at the ABC Conference in early 1941. Because the army
lacked sufficient troops for garrisoning purposes, the First Marine
Brigade took on the assignment.^®
To escort the marines, LeBreton and his staff, including Hall,
sailed from Newport in the New York and joined the rest of the convoy.
At LeBreton*s direction. Hall had written the operation plan for the
landing. On 7 July LeBreton's force anchored at Hvalfjordur, and the
marines began to unload their equipment at Reykjavik.The task force
had completed the first "joint landing" of World War II, although it
was actually an administrative movement of troops rather than an
amphibious landing, and the United States was not yet at war. Hall
®®Hough et al.. Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, pp. 35-37, 39; Abbazia, Roosevelt's Navy, pp. 198-99.
®^Log Book, U.S.S. New York, 1 January-31 December 1941, NA, RG 2;4:JLH Oral History, pp. 98-99.
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was on hand for the initial amphibious operation of the war; he would
participate in many more.
For the next several months Hall continued as LeBreton's acting
chief of staff and assisted in running the neutrality patrol as Task
Force One. In theory, this force was to help defend Iceland and to
escort convoys between the United States and Iceland, but it seemed to
Hall that American actions were provocative. For example, the force
would send a battleship and two destroyers on twenty-day cruises south
of Iceland in North Atlantic waters. If any incident had occurred with
German submarines, American ships would have forcibly defended them
selves— although they had nothing in their orders to attack— and the
United States would have become involved in the war. After the Greer
incident on 4 September, Roosevelt ordered the navy to shoot on sight
58 any Axis ships of war in waters that the United States patrolled.
In December 1941, Rear Admiral John W. Wilcox, Jr., replaced
LeBreton as commander. Battleships, Atlantic Fleet, and Hall became
his chief of staff. Three months later Wilcox headed Task Force
Thirty-Nine, destined for Scapa Flow to help the British Home Fleet
protect the Murmansk convoys against German forces in Norway. While
en route to Britain, Wilcox was lost at sea; Rear Admiral
58 JLH Oral History, pp. 102-3; Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 1: The Battle of the Atlantic: September 1939-May 1943 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1947), pp. 78-86. For a good description of the neutrality patrol, see Abbazia, Roosevelt's Navy, pp. 61-129.
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Robert C. Giffen assumed tactical command of the task force; and Hall
59 again served as chief of staff.
After reaching Scapa Flow on 4 April, units of the task force
and of the British Home Fleet conducted a series of exercises in
Pentland Firth. Later in April Hall made a trip to inspect several
naval aviation facilities in Scotland and the U.S. Naval Station at
Londonderry, Northern Ireland, while some ships of the force joined the
home fleet ships to provide cover for a Russia-bound convoy. As chief
of staff. Hall was directly involved in planning for convoys and for
the disposition of ships.®®
While at Scapa Flow, Hall had an opportunity to talk with
Admiral Sir John Tovey who commanded the home fleet. Accompanying
King George VI on an inspection tour, Tovey expressed his concern to
Hall about the British fleet. He had been impressed with the smart
appearance, design, maintenance, engineering, communications and
gunnery efficiency, and tactical handling of the American ships and
felt that the British fleet was markedly inferior by comparison. Tovey,
hoping for improvement in the British vessels, had spoken to the Lords
of the Admiralty of the superiority of American ships.During the
59 JLH interview, 11 March 1977.
^^4, 21, 24, and 28 April 1942, War Diary, Atlantic Fleet, Cruiser Division Seven, vol. 1 (9 March-11 December 1942), OA, NHD; JLH Oral History, p. 86.
^^JLH conversation with Adm. Tovey described in letter to Commo dore Dudley W. Knox, 21 July 1947, Correspondence: June 1946-June 1951 file, JLH Papers. Knox had suggested earlier that Hall write an account of the conversation for the navy’s historical record. Also, JLH Oral History, pp. 86-88.
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war, Hall felt that Britain was never able to duplicate the equipment
or sailing ability found in U.S. ships of war, and this inferiority
would be a source of great concern to Hall several years later as he
prepared for the largest amphibious invasion of World War II'— Normandy,
In June 1942 Hall returned to the United States and soon
learned that he would become commander of the sea frontier forces after
the projected Allied invasion of French Morocco. He had hoped to get
command of one of the fast new battleships in the Pacific Fleet and
was bitterly disappointed with a shore command after training all his
life for combat at sea.®^ He had no idea that his new assignment was
the beginning of many amphibious campaigns that would be of vital
importance in winning the war.
By the late summer of 1942, the United States had committed
itself to wage a two-ocean war that would be spearheaded by a series
of amphibious landings against enemy territories. Although Allied
strategy had determined the method of offensive operations, the armed
forces of the United States stood unprepared. They had devised
adequate amphibious doctrines, had held a succession of practice exer
cises, and had started producing landing craft and other essential
equipment; but they had not foreseen the extensive Axis conquests that
would give strategic importance to this relatively untried method of
assault.
62 Orders and Travel, 7 January 1942-27 December 1945 file. JLH Papers.
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Although the services, especially the navy which bore the major
responsibility for joint operations, had reluctantly and sporadically
developed the necessary methodology and materiel, they had not concen
trated on training those men who would command amphibious landings.
As an illustration. Hall had had little in his background before 1937
that anticipated joint landings. Touched on only briefly at the Naval
War College, amphibious warfare did not seem very important. Certain
skills learned there such as the writing of operation plans and orders
and the ability to work with diversified staff members could be trans
ferred to new situations. Participation in FLEX Seven and the Icelandic
operation gave Hall at least a taste of his future wartime role. His
duties in handling convoys, as chief of staff to LeBreton, Wilcox, and
Giffen, also provided experience in an important facet of amphibious
tactics.
When offensive operations began in the European theater, amphib
ious warfare entailed cooperation with other Allies, especially the
British and to a lesser extent the French. Such coalition fighting
(combined operations) called for close working relationships with the
British, and quite naturally problems arose over both strategy and
tactics. In addition, the operations involved army-navy collaboration,
and again friction as well as cooperation developed. All of these
elements of combined and joint amphibious assault landings became
intertwined as the new form of warfare evolved.
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OPERATION TORCH: NORTH AFRICA
Background
In the early months of 1942, American and British strategists
had not decided the location of the first offensive move against the
Axis. The necessity of sending more British troops to the Middle East
and more American forces to the southwest Pacific strained Allied
resources. To offset the demands of Admiral King and Lieutenant
General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the U.S. Armed Forces in the
Far East, for more men and supplies for the Pacific, army chief of
staff General George C. Marshall advocated a sharp focus on the
Germany-first strategy. He secured Roosevelt’s approval for a massive
military buildup in Britain (Operation Bolero), followed by either a
small-scale cross-channel invasion in late 1942 (Operation Sledgehammer)
or a large assault on the continent by 1 April 1943 (Operation Roundup).
The British reluctantly agreed to the plan in April 1942.^
But then a series of Ax’s successes led the combined planners
to revise their strategy. As Hitler's armies drove deeper into the
Matloff and Snell, Strategic Planning, 1941-1942, pp. 102-5, 175-76; Charles B. MacDonald, The Mighty Endeavor : American Armed Forces in the European Theater in World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 58-59 (hereafter cited as MacDonald, Mighty Endeavor).
46
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Soviet Union, foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov came to Washington
in June and convinced Roosevelt of the need for a second front in 1942,
preferably in Europe, to take some pressure off the eastern front.
Following Molotov’s visit, Churchill and his chiefs of staff met with
Roosevelt during the week of 18-25 June. While the Allied leaders
talked, news of more Axis triumphs came from Africa and from the Far
East. On the home front, war production lagged behind expectations,
casting doubt on the idea that Anglo-American forces would have suffi- 2 cient strength to launch a major cross-channel attack in 1943.
Churchill, hesitant to endorse a head-on invasion of the
continent until the Allies had achieved maximum capability, argued
eloquen ly for weakening the Axis by peripheral attacks, beginning with
North Africa. Overruling the vigorous opposition of Marshall and King,
on 30 July Roosevelt finally approved the North African landings, which
O were to take place within four months.
The North African invasion, code named "Torch," had as its
ultimate purpose the occupation of French Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia,
2 Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 2: Operations in North African Waters, October 1942-June 1943 (Boston; Little, Brown & Co., 1947), pp. 12-14 (here after cited as Morison, North African Waters); William R. Emerson, "F. D. R. (1941-45) ," in The Ultimate D e c is ion , ed. Ernest L. May (New York: George Braziller, 1960), p. 156.
Arthur Layton Funk, The Politics of Torch: The Allied Landings and the Algiers "Putsch," 1942 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1974), p. 87 (hereafter cited as Funk, Politics of Torch); Richard W. Steele, The First Offensive 1942: Roosevelt, Marshall and the Making of American Strategy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), pp. 172, 178.
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in order to intensify offensive operations against the Axis in the east
and eventually to clear the African continent of German and Italian
forces. The final plan of 9 September projected a three-pronged com
bined attack, to be undertaken no later than 8 November 1942, The
Center Naval Task Force, under Commodore Thomas H. Troubridge, RN,
would land Major General Lloyd R. Frendenhall, USA, with 39,000
American troops to capture Oran in Algeria; the Eastern Naval Task
Force, commanded by Rear Admiral Sir H. M. Burrough, RN, would trans
port 83,000 British and American troops, under Major General Charles W.
Ryder, USA, to attack Algiers; and the Western Naval Task Force, under
Rear Admiral H, Kent Hewitt, USN, would land Major General George S.
Patton, Jr,, USA, and his 35,000 troops in French Morocco to capture
Casablanca and Port Lyautey,^
Serving as supreme commander of the combined operation would
be an American army officer. Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Directly under him. Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, RN, would command
the naval forces. Eisenhower would exercise direct control over the
commanding generals of the three task forces and over the land-based
air forces, and through Cunningham, over the naval commanders of the
assaulting forces. For the U.S. Navy, this combined command structure
would become effective when the ships reached a point in the mid-
Atlantic. While at sea and during the assault stage of the operation.
^Mason, "Amphibious Warfare," chap. 3, pp. 24-27, 45-48; Morison, North African Waters, pp. 16-17.
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the naval commanders would control the task forces until the commanding
generals of each were established ashore. A change from the pre-war
concept of mutual cooperation in amphibious operations, the new princi
ple of unity of command would be tried in the North African campaign.^
Preparation
Considering the size and complexity of the projected combined
assault and the general lack of readiness for it, the Allies had
seemingly embarked on a risky but optimistic course of action. The
American landing on Guadalcanal in August 1942 initially involved a
small landing force of marines put ashore on an island rather than on
a continental land mass. Eventually it took 60,000 marines and
soldiers six months to win Guadalcanal— not an encouraging omen for
the efficacy of future amphibious operations.^
Meanwhile, the British, in desperation, had staged a series of
hit-and-run amphibious raids against outposts of Hitler's Europe,
including the Lofoten Islands in March 1941. Later that year, com
mandoes struck at the Norwegian islands of Vaagso and Maaloy, and in
February and March 1942 they raided Bruneval and St. Nazaire on the
^George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West, in United States Army in World War II: The Mediterranean Theater of Operations (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1957), pp. 32-39 (hereafter cited as Howe, Northwest Africa); Information Con cerning Operation Torch, June-November 1942, series II, folder 182, Comnaveu.
^John Miller, Jr., Guadalcanal: The First Offensive, in United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1949), pp. 1, 40, 350.
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French coast. Dieppe, the last, largest, and most disastrous of the
raids, coincided with the American amphibious landing at Guadalcanal.
The British raids, not intended to implant a large force on the main
land, were of little importance in the development of tactics for the
mammoth amphibious landings in the European theater that began with
North Africa.^
On the other side of the Atlantic, American preparations for a
large seaborne assault on enemy shores had been underway since Admiral
Hewitt assumed command of the Amphibious Force, Atlantic Fleet, in
April. The novelty of the amphibious concept and the hurried months
of organizing his command and preparing for Operation Torch led Hewitt
to believe that his force had not achieved sufficient strength or
efficiency. In late August, he complained that his troops had not had
enough training in landing operations, combat loading, or regular field
operations, while naval units were ill-prepared to conduct shore
bombardment, submarine, minecraft, and aviation tasks. Bombardment
ammunition was insufficient; transports lacked well-trained crews; and
communications equipment and personnel were unsatisfactory. Serious
defects appeared in landing and support craft, machine guns, and
^Barry Hunt and Donald Schurman, "Prelude to Dieppe: Thoughts on Combined Operations Policy in the 'Raiding Period,' 1940-1942," in Jordan, Naval Warfare in the Twentieth Century, pp. 194, 198, 207-8. Cf., James Ladd, Commandos and Rangers of World War II (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), pp. 84, 92, who insists that the Dieppe raid was an "essential preliminary" to Normandy because the Allies learned not to attack a defended port (hereafter cited as Ladd, Commandos and Ra ng ers ).
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navigational equipment. To top it all off, the task force had no
Q suitable flagship.
While Hewitt worked in Norfolk, his army counterpart for the
operation. General Patton, headquartered in Washington, began the
planning and preparation for the Western Task Force Army. His outline
plan of 16 October called for simultaneous landings at Safi, Fedala,
and Mehedia, and the subsequent capture of the Port Lyautey airport and
of Casablanca. The 35,000 troops and 250 tanks required for the
assault trained on both the east and west coasts, and some participated
q in joint training with Hewitt's forces.
Army and navy rehearsals for Operation Torch took place in the
Chesapeake Bay in late September and early October. Exercise "Quick,"
the full dress rehearsal held on 3 October, had a multitude of
deficiencies, including the late arrival of boat waves and poor loading
of troops into the landing craft, To add to the commanders' exaspera
tion, security broke down. Waiting on the beach to refresh the troops
was an ice cream vendor, peddling his wares.Patton witnessed one
rehearsal that might have prompted his remarks just before the task
force sailed: "Never in history has the Navy landed an army at the
planned time and place. If you land us anywhere within fifty miles of
^"Hewitt's report of 28 August 1942, cited in Mason, "Amphibious Warfare," chap. 5, p. 56.
9 Howe, Northwest Africa, pp. 46, 61.
^^"Administrative History, Cinclant, Amphibious Training Command," 1: chap. 7, pp. 20-21, 25-26.
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Fedala and within one week of D-Day, I'll go ahead and win. . .
After Patton had devised the plan for the North African opera
tion, Hewitt followed by spelling out the duties of the navy: the
Western Naval Task Force was to transport and land troops and to pro
vide continuing naval support for subsequent operations in securing
French Morocco and Algeria and in the occupation of Tunisia. In addi
tion, the force was to establish the Sea Frontier Forces, Western Task
12 Force, including a naval operating base.
Designed to protect and control shipping on the Atlantic coast
of French Morocco and to provide shore facilities for continuing
logistical support of Patton's army, the sea frontier forces were to
begin functioning as quickly as possible after the North African
invasion. The command of these forces fell to Captain Hall, who
arrived in Washington on 8 September to begin preparation for the
13 operation.
Knowledgeable in staff work, plans and orders writing, and
convoy duties, Hall found these experiences useful for his new position.
Because few officers were assigned to his command. Hall had difficulty
forming a staff. Some of the men initially on the staff were sometimes
^^Quoted in Morison, North African Waters, pp. 41-42.
12 Commander, Task Force 34, Operation Plan 5-42, annex C, serial 00158 of 9 October 1942, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Operation Plan 5-42).
^^Sea Frontier Forces, Western Task Force, Operation Plan A-42, 16 October 1942, JLH Papers (hereafter cited as Operation Plan A-42),
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incompetent, and Hall eventually wrote the plans and orders for the
sea frontier forces himself. After the orders were ready. Hall asked
the young reservist serving as communications officer to draw up a
communication plan, but he had never heard of one. Hall then requested
the assignment of Commander Robert E. Melling as communications officer,
because he had been responsible for the rejection by the chief of
naval communications of Hall's request for decoding machines for use
by the new command— because "they might fall into enemy hands."
Jokingly, Hall speculated that Melling must be an expert since he knew
how to establish world-wide communications without decoding machines.
The choice of Melling proved fortunate; he later was able to set up
point-to-point communications with Washington before Patton and the
.. . 14 army did.
Staff difficulties were soon smoothed out, only to be replaced
by logistical problems. As Hewitt and Patton put the final touches on
their plans, neither officer could give Hall space in the invasion
convoy for his men and supplies. Hall needed to include 65 officers,
336 enlisted men, and about 570 metric tons of equipment.
When the Combined Chiefs of Staff met in Washington on
16 September 1942, Hall discussed convoy problems with a group that
included Admiral Royal E. Ingersoll, commander in chief, Atlantic Fleet;
Vice Admiral Russell Willson, King's chief of staff; Rear Admiral
^^JLH interview, 7 October 1976; JLH Oral History, pp. 109-11.
^^Operation Plan A-42.
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Charles M. Cooke, Jr., King's chief of plans; Hewitt; Patton; Major
General Mark Clark of Eisenhower's staff; and three British admirals.
The men began talking about the anticipated D-plus-five-day convoy at
Casablanca, and Hall pointed out that such a convoy would be impossible.
Since Hall was only a captain, the group reacted with surprise, but he
explained that he could not find space in the attack force to transport
his men and materiel and that the planners apparently anticipated
undamaged ports and equipment. He felt that the French would put up a
fight and that the ports would require extensive repairs before the
Allies could use them. To circumvent the loading problem, Hewitt
ordered Hall to act as temporary chief of staff for Torch. He was then
able to get sufficient space for the necessary contingent of his sea
frontier forces.
The response of the French, whose cooperation would vastly
simplify the North African venture, had concerned top-level combined
planners throughout the preparations for Torch. After Hitler's armies
defeated France in 1940, Marshall Henri Petain's government at Vichy
agreed to defend France's North African colonies against any attack,
if Germany left France in control of those colonies. The United States
had maintained diplomatic relations with Vichy and had encouraged
economic aid for North Africa through the Murphy-Weygand Agreement of
"^Minutes of meeting of U.S. and British naval officers regarding naval aspects of Torch planning, 16 September 1942, Records of Naval Forces, Northwest African Waters, 1942-43, enclosure A, OA, NHD (here after cited as Records, Northwest African Waters); JLH Oral History, pp. 112-13; JLH interview, 10 October 1976.
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March 1941, but the potential reactions of French military leaders in
North Africa, most of whom were loyal to Petain’s government, caused
the Alliés great concern.Since the British did not recognize the
Vichy regime and had further antagonized it by supporting General
Charles de Gaulle's Free French Committee, combined planners tried to
placate potential French hostility by placing American troops in the
vanguard of the assault forces. Not knowing the French reaction, the
Combined Chiefs of Staff issued an order on 5 October that no offensive
action would be taken against the French forces unless they first
1 A initiated hostilities.
The Attack
As the date of departure of the Western Naval Task Force (Task
Force Thirty-four) approached. Hall became a rear admiral. On 23 Octo
ber he and Hewitt boarded the flagship, the cruiser Augusta, accompanied
by Patton, his deputy. Major General Geoffrey Keyes, and Brigadier
General John K. Cannon, who commanded ground-air support.Components
of the 105-ship task force sortied from Hampton Roads, Casco Bay, and
Bermuda and sailed toward French Morocco. Simultaneously, ships of
Russell Brooks, "Casablanca— The French Side of the Fence," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 77 (September 1951):911 (hereafter cited as Brooks, "Casablanca"). The standard account of U.S. policy toward Vichy France is William L. Langer, Our Vichy Gamble (New York; W. W. Norton & Co., 1947), while Funk, Politics of Torch, places more emphasis on French motives and actions.
18 Operation Plan 5-42.
19 Log Book, U.S.S. Augusta, 25 July-31 December 1942, NA, RG 24.
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the Eastern and Center Task Forces assembled at Firth of Clyde and
headed for Algiers and Oran. The most ambitious amphibious assault
force in modern warfare was underway.
The passage of Hewitt's force across the Atlantic proceeded
uneventfully; fortunately the convoy encountered no enemy submarines
and spotted only one unidentified aircraft. During the voyage Hall's
earlier practice in convoy handling proved useful to Hewitt, whose
staff was generally inexperienced in this type of duty. To be readily
available for convoy problems. Hall often slept on a cot on the bridge
20 of the Augusta and assisted in the operation of the convoy. He also
effectively served as liaison between the army officers and Hewitt,
and Patton confided to his diary that Hall was "a fine influence." He
"impresses me more all the while.
As the task force neared the African coast, apprehension about
possible bad weather briefly threatened the whole operation. The sea
started making up on the fourth, and two days later a severe storm
jeopardized the landing plans. If bad weather persisted, Hewitt was
to move his force into the Mediterranean and land on a section of the
French Moroccan coast. Although Hewitt received dire weather forecasts
for the Casablanca area from both Washington and Eisenhower's head
quarters at Gibraltar— one predicted fifteen-foot swells that would
20 JLH interview, 7 October 1976. pi Diary entries, 21 and 23 October 1942, in Martin Blumenson, The Patton Papers; 1940-1945 (Boston; Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974), pp. 93, 95 (hereafter cited as Blumenson, Patton Papers).
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make the assault impossible— he relied on his own aerological officer,
Lieutenant Commander R. C. Steere, who predicted that the storm would
pass. There would be showers but the swell and surf would be slight
on D-Day. Hewitt decided at midnight of 6-7 November to launch the
22 attack as planned. The weather was no worse than normal on 8 Novem
ber. Hall and the other naval officers had always known that the
landing on the Atlantic coast of Morocco would be difficult.^3
After making the decision to go ahead with the landing, Hewitt
split his force into three attack groups: Rear Admiral Lyal A. David
son's southern group headed toward Safi; Rear Admiral Monroe Kelly led
the northern group toward Mehedia; and Captain Robert R. M, Emmet's
center group sailed toward Fedala, accompanied by Hewitt's flagship
Augusta. Assisting all three groups were Rear Admiral Ernest D.
McWhorter’s air group, which included the aircraft carrier Ranger and
four escort carriers to handle air support, and Rear Admiral Robert C.
Giffen's covering group with a battleship, two heavy cruisers, and four
destroyers to provide protection against attacks from the sea.^^
22 John Clagett, "Biography of Admiral H. Kent Hewitt," pp. 316- 19, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Clagett, "Hewitt"); Commander Task Force 34, Preliminary Report of Torch Operation, enclosure D, pp. 1-2, serial 00241 of 28 November 1942, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Hewitt's Preliminary Report, Torch).
^^JLH Oral History, pp. 115-16.
24 Morison, North African Waters, pp. 43-44, 50-51; H. Kent Hewitt, "The Landing in Morocco: November 1942," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 78 (November 1952);1244-45 (hereafter cited as Hewitt, "Landing in Morocco").
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Emmet's center group positioned itself some six to eight miles
north of the Fedala beaches, and the scout boats left for their missions
at 0145. The beaches had gradual gradients, stretched for two and
one-half miles, and were 130 to 160 yards wide. Some off-shore reefs
partially blocked the approaches.
Landing boats carried the first wave of heavily laden assault
troops to the beaches at 0505— sixty-five minutes later than the planned
H-Hour. The combination of darkness, often faulty navigation, inexperi
enced crews, and an ebb tide caused a heavy loss of landing craft on
this first wave. Other boats that were not unloaded quickly enough lay
stranded on the beaches and, combined with the wrecked craft, hindered
the buildup of troops and equipment in subsequent waves. Nevertheless,
about 3,500 troops made it ashore before daylight and secured their
25 beachhead objectives. Throughout this entire time Hall was with
Hewitt and assisted in deploying the attack forces, in covering against
enemy submarines, and in unloading troops and equipment.
So far there had been no response from the French except a
brief play of searchlights at 0500. Then shore batteries opened fire
an hour later, dashing American hopes that the French defenders were
responding favorably to Roosevelt's early-morning broadcast asking them
to shine their searchlights in the air as a signal of non-resistance.
"Play Ball !", the code words signifying offensive action, rang out, and
25 Howe, Northwest Africa, pp. 123-26.
^^JLH Oral History, p. 115.
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the Center Attack Group returned the gunfire, The Augusta launched her
four spotter aircraft and took position about 14,000 yards off shore
for counterbattery bombardment. Her eight-inch guns silenced the Cape
Fedala batteries, but only temporarily. Visibility was poor, and haze P7 and heavy black smoke obscured the coastline.
From the bridge of the Augusta, Patton and Hall observed two
engagements in which the flagship took part. At 0745 eight French
submarines, two destroyer leaders, and five destroyers had sortied from
Casablanca harbor, and the Augusta and the Brooklyn engaged the
destroyers, which then retired to Casablanca. A French cruiser, the
Primauguet, joined the destroyers, possibly heading for the transport
area; and the Augusta and four destroyers energetically fought them,
sinking one destroyer and damaging a destroyer leader. By 1100, two
more French destroyers were sunk, and another destroyer, a cruiser, and
a destroyer leader were badly damaged. The Augusta received no direct
hits from enemy fire, although some shells, including dye-loaded
projectiles, used to spot ships' gunfire, landed so close that they
28 splashed water on the main deck.
Meanwhile, in spite of the strafing of the beaches and boats
27 Action Report, U.S.S. Augusta (8-10 November 1942), enclosure A, p. 1, serial 00110 of 29 November 1942, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Augusta Action Report).
28 Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Northwest African Waters, Action Report, Operation Torch, serial 00142 of 13 May 1943, JLH Papers (hereafter cited as Hewitt's Action Report, Torch) ; Capt. A. G. Shepard, Report on Operation Torch, pp. 18-21, serial 0014 of 9 January 1943, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Shepard's Report, Torch).
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by French planes. Major General Jonathan W. Anderson's troops had
successfully taken their initial objectives at Fedala and finally
silenced the big guns at Cape Fedala. Of crucial importance to the
landing force was the use of naval air support. The carrier Ranger
and carrier escort Suwannee, part of McWhorter's air group, provided
the fighters and dive bombers that knocked French planes from the skies
29 and battered enemy ships and shore installations.
After the sea battles on the morning of D-Day, Patton, his
party, and Hall left the Augusta for a reconnaissance trip and landed
on the beach at Fedala shortly after 1300.^^ As the general and the
admiral walked along the beach. Hall saw a couple of sailors trying to
shove a broached LCM into the water and asked Patton to get some of his
soldiers to help. While the men pushed the boat, a squadron of French
planes strafed the area, and one of the bluejackets fell down, doubled
up. Hall thought the young man had been hit. Patton walked over and
gave him a swift kick in the stern; the sailor jumped up and started
pushing the LCM. Patton explained later that he had realized that the
sailor was not hit but had assumed an "attitude of fear""— doubled up
29 Commander, Task Group 34.2, Reports on Torch Operation, enclo sure A, serial F-0032 of 8 December 1942, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as McWhorter's Action Report); Hewitt, "Landing in Morocco," p. 1245.
30 Warren Tute, The North African War (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1976), p. 187, mistakenly asserts that Hall went to Fedala to discuss peace on 8 November and tried to see Michelier in Casablanca the same day (hereafter cited as Tute, North African War).
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31 like a fetus in its mother’s womb. Patton spent the night ashore at
the Hotel Miramar at Fedala, and Hall returned to the Augusta later in
the afternoon.
The next day Patton returned briefly to the flagship, sent his
staff ashore, and then established his advanced headquarters at the
Hotel Miramar. Command of the task force thus passed from Hewitt to
Patton and followed Admiral King's directive of 7 October, which stated
that under the principle of unity of command the navy would command the
landing force during the amphibious assault and that the army would
assume command when its headquarters was established ashore and the
32 general indicated that he was ready to command. Command relationships
worked smoothly in Operation Torch, largely because of Patton's
willingness to let the navy handle naval business. Such friendly
army-navy teamwork would not always be present in forthcoming amphib-
33 ious operations. Patton wrote enthusiastically about the navy's
competence: "The performance of the Navy in this fleet, particularly
Admirals Hewitt and Hall, has been of the highest order. I am amazed
at their efficiency, and I am delighted at the wholehearted spirit of
31 Shepard's Report, Torch, p. 22; JLH Oral History, pp. 138-40. Blumenson, Patton Papers, p. 108, places this incident on 9 November.
32 Howe, Northwest Africa, p. 137; Mason, "Amphibious Warfare," chap. 3, pp. 8-12.
^^JLH interview, 30 October 1976.
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cooperation they have evinced.
Throughout the day of 8 November the unloading of troops and
supplies continued as Patton prepared for the assault on Casablanca.
Although Hall could do little to start cleaning up the beaches until
the fighting ended, he sent some of his men ashore to set up a boat
repair unit to begin work on the damaged landing craft, now estimated
at about 125 boats. French fighters continued to fire on the beaches
and transports, which had moved closer to shore to expedite the landing
of troops and equipment. Some of the transports docked in Fedala
harbor. During the day the army captured the airfields at Safi and
Port Lyautey. One alarming note sounded, however; the covering group
and the center attack group cruisers were running low on ammunition.
35 The Brooklyn reported a similar condition the next day.
On the tenth, French resistance continued, and late in the
morning two French corvettes out of Casablanca harbor opened fire on
the troops on the beaches. The Augusta launched her four aircraft and
with four destroyers chased the corvettes back into the harbor, but
the action drew the flagship within range of the powerful 35,000-ton
French battleship, Jean Bart. Although that ship had not been completed
Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., to Gen. A. D. Surles, 6 November 1942, quoted in Blumenson, Patton Papers, pp. 101-2. That same day Patton wrote in a similar vein to Marshall; "Admiral Hewitt and his chief of staff. Admiral Hall, have shown the utmost cooperation and the finest spirit," ibid., p. 100.
35 Hewitt's Action Report, Torch, appendix I; Hewitt's Preliminary Report, Torch, pp. 12-13.
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and was moored to her berth in the harbor, she had four highly accurate
fifteen-inch guns in her forward turret. The Jean Bart's firepower,
combined with the coast defense batteries on the El Hank promontory to
the west, had provided the lively battles in Casablanca harbor on D-Day
and remained operational. On the eighth the Jean Bart had taken
several aerial bombs and five sixteen-inch shells from the Massachu
setts, one of which jammed the turret in train and kept it out of
action until the next day. The stern of the damaged battleship settled
36 to the bottom of the shallow water at her berth.
As the Augusta moved into range for the battle on the tenth,
the Jean Bart fired ten two-gun salvos, most of which landed with
large yellow splashes near the flagship. Realizing the futility of
remaining within the Jean Bart's range. Captain Gordon Hutchins wisely
returned the Augusta to her station in the transport area. Later that
afternoon carrier planes dropped 1,000-pound bombs on the Jean Bart,
causing extensive damage but not putting the turret and fire control
37 gear out of action. The inability of the naval gunfire to still the
Jean Bart's guns caused Hall grave concern about future engagements
with a well-armored, powerful enemy. The armor-piercing shells
36 Augusta Action Report, enclosure D, pp. 5-6; Hewitt's Action Report, Torch, appendix I: Naval Commander Expeditionary Force to Admiralty, 8 November 1942, Messages: Torch, series I, folder 6, Comn av eu .
37 H. Kent Hewitt, "Meeting the Jean Bart's Commander," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 83 (September 1957):1005; McWhorter's Action Report, enclosure A, p. 4.
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with their low explosive capacity, fired by the Massachusetts, were
38 relatively ineffective.
In the early evening Hall went ashore to arrange naval support
for Patton's planned attack on the city of Casablanca, scheduled for
0715 on the eleventh. The next day, at 0600, the Augusta, the New York,
the Cleveland, and the escorting destroyers got underway to carry out
the bombardment of Casablanca; but Patton ordered a cease-fire before
the attack began. The French had decided to capitulate, and Rear
Admiral Pierre-Jean Ronarc'h and General Raymond Desre surrendered the
forces at Casablanca to General Anderson in the late morning. Patton
did not know whether Admiral François Michelier, commander in chief of
the French naval forces in North Africa, would attend the morning
session or send his chief of staff. Admiral Misoffe; therefore Hewitt
sent Hall for the morning meeting. After Michelier agreed to come to
the conference at Fedala that afternoon, Hewitt came ashore to join
the discussion. General Auguste P. Noguês, resident general in Morocco,
oq arrived from Rabat and negotiations began.
Concerned about the exposed transports. Hall asked Michelier
where the submarines under his command were located and under whose
orders they operated. Evasively, the French admiral reassured Hall
38 JLH interview, 10 October 1976; U.S.S. Massachusetts Action Report, p. 2, serial 007 of 13 November 1942, OA, NHD, echoed a similar complaint about the ineffective A.P.s (hereafter cited as Massachusetts Action Report).
39 Howe, Northwest Africa, pp. 171-73; Clagett, "Hewitt," pp. 335-36.
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that French submarines would not attack American vessels. As the talks
continued, Patton reached an informal, friendly agreement with the
French; U.S. forces would occupy areas needed for security and opera
tional purposes; the French troops would retain their arms; and both
forces would exchange prisoners. The Allies could now expect the
French to work with them and also to control the native Moroccan
population.The respectful and nonpunitive attitude of Patton,
Hewitt, and other American officers toward their recent enemy paved
the way for French cooperation against the Axis in North Africa. The
Western Task Force had completed its mission of securing the Atlantic
coast of French Morocco.
When Casablanca and its harbor had been secured, the next task
was to prepare for the arrival of the D-plus-five-day convoy, bringing
supplies essential for sustaining Patton's army; but there were still
transports of the assault force off Fedala waiting to be unloaded.
In spite of the increasing danger of attacks by Axis submarines, Hewitt
decided to leave the transports off shore so that Casablanca harbor
could be partially cleared of French vessels and damaged ships before
the convoy arrived. During the evening of 11 November, German sub
marines torpedoed the oiler Winooski and the destroyer Hambleton and
sank the transport Joseph Hewes, all anchored off Fedala.
Early the next day Hewitt called a conference on board the
Augusta. Emmet, commanding transports as well as the Center Attack
40 Brooks, "Casablanca," p. 922; JLH interview, 16 October 1976.
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Group; Hutchins, the flagship’s skipper; Captain Norman S. Ives,
commanding submarine squadron fifty; Lieutenant Commander H. R. Brook-
man, the material officer; Captain A, G. Shepard, an observer from
Admiral Royal E. Ingersoll's staffand Hall met with Hewitt and
discussed whether the transports should remain off Fedala, put to sea,
or come into Casablanca. Emmet had spoken with Hall privately, and the
two men agreed that Emmet's job was to support the troops by unloading
those transports laden with supplies. Hewitt decided to leave the
ships off Fedala and, by working around the clock, speed up unloading
them while Hall's sea frontier forces made Casablanca harbor ready for
42 use. German submarines subsequently sank the transports Edward
Rutledge, Tasker H. Bliss, and Hugh L. Scott, but overall losses for
the campaign were relatively light. Hall felt that Hewitt made the
correct decision, for the task force was able both to complete the
unloading of the transports and to prepare the harbor for the convoy.
^^Ingersoll (Cinclant) retained operational control over the Western Naval Task Force and follow-up convoys until they reached the "chop point" in the mid-Atlantic. Shepard's presence at this decision making meeting was therefore appropriate.
^^Shepard's Report, Torch, pp. 42-45; "The Reminiscences of Admiral H. Kent Hewitt," Naval History Project, Oral History Research Office, Columbia University, 1962, 2:298-99, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Hewitt's Oral History); JLH interview, 16 October 1976.
^^JLH interview, 10 October 1976. Cf., Morison, North African Waters, pp. 168-70, which is very critical of Hewitt's choice. The two admirals continued to discuss the decision years later when Morison's book was published, Hall did not accept Morison's conclusion that Hewitt made the wrong choice. Hall to Hewitt, 28 March 1947, Papers of H. Kent Hewitt, Box 1, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Hewitt Papers).
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On the afternoon of the twelfth, the Augusta steamed into
Casablanca harbor and was the first American ship to enter the port.
Soon afterwards. Rear Admiral Bernard H. Bieri, deputy chief of staff
of the Atlantic Fleet, and detailed to Allied force headquarters, and
a group of army officers arrived from Gibraltar in the Welshman to
confer with Patton and Hewitt. Poor communications between the Western
Task Force and Eisenhower's command headquarters at Gibraltar had
created problems, for Patton had finished negotiating with the French
before Eisenhower learned what was happening. After Bieri met with
Hewitt and Patton on board the Augusta, he returned to Gibraltar,
carrying the narrative of the American military victory back to 44 Eisenhower.
The amphibious operations had been dramatically successful.
In addition to the battles won by the Center Task Group, other units
under Hewitt's command performed admirably. Kelly's Northern Task
Group put ashore Brigadier General Lucian K. Truscott's Ninth Division
near Mehedia; the army secured the important Port Lyautey airport; and
French resistance ended by midnight 10-11 November. Simultaneously,
the Southern Task Group, commanded by Davidson, landed Major General
E. N. Harmon's Second Armored Division which captured the port of Safi.^^
^^Shepard's Report, Torch, pp. 46-47; Hewitt's Preliminary Report, Torch, p. 16.
^^Morison, North African Waters, pp. 116, 133, 135, 155-56. Harley Cope, "Play Ball, Navy!" United States Naval Institute Pro ceedings 69 (October 1943):1311-18, happily concludes that "With such perfect coordination and understanding between air, naval, and land
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While the Western Naval Task Force battled on the Atlantic coast of
French Morocco, the two British forces quickly overcame opposition at
their Mediterranean landing sites. Burrough's Eastern Task Force
assaulted the harbor and city of Algiers, which capitulated late on
8 November. The Center Task Force, under Commodore Troubridge,
attacked Oran and Arzew, and the French surrendered on 10 November.
In spite of the successes of the combined operations, there
were many shortcomings in the conduct of amphibious warfare, and
American naval commanders learned valuable lessons from the attack on
North Africa. Of overwhelming importance was the necessity of allowing
adequate time to train and to prepare for such an undertaking. In the
case of North Africa, political, military, and weather conditions
determined that early November was the latest possible time in 1942
for the operation and thus shortened the necessary three-to-five months
of preparation. The results of this deficiency appeared in all phases
of the naval operation— from insufficiently equipped and manned landing
craft, to communications problems, to clearing the beaches, to
47 unloading and debarking from the transports.
units all objectives were taken over with such lightning speed that the enemy was unable to catch a second breath before he was contained."
^^Stephen W. Roskill, The War at Sea; 1939-1945, vol. 2: The Period of Balance (London: HMSO, 1956), pp. 324-28. A more recent British account of the North African operation is Keith Sainsbury, The North African Landings, 1942: A Strategic Decision (London: Davis- Poynter, 1976).
^^Mason, "Amphibious Warfare," chap, 5, pp. 36-38; Andrew Browne Cunningham, A Sailor's Odyssey; The Autobiography of Admiral of the
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The landing craft themselves proved unequal to the magnitude
of the job. Still lacking the large new LSTs, LCTs, and LCIs (Landing
Craft Infantry), the landing force had to rely on the smaller LCVs
(Landing Craft Vehicle), LCP(R)s (Landing Craft Personnel, Ramped),
LCP(L)s (Landing Craft Personnel, Large), LCSs (Landing Craft Support),
and LCMs. A few experimental LVT(l)s (amtracs), later used extensively
in the Pacific, were tried out. Contributing to landing craft problems
were gasoline engines that often died when water hit them, poorly
functioning magnetic compasses, inadequate radios, failures of ramp
mechanisms, and crews ill-trained in navigation and boat handling. Hall
felt that the heavy loss of landing craft and tank lighters^^ during
the assaults could have been lessened if he had been able to get more
of his repair and salvage crews ashore after the initial attack, but
no facilities had been provided for this type of early clean up. He
49 had to wait until the battle was finished.
Fleet Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1951), p. 492 (hereafter cited as Cunningham, Sailor's Odyssey).
48 Estimates vary. Morison, North African Waters, p. 79 n., says 137 out of 347 at Fedala; Emmet, the commander of transports and of the Center Attack Group, puts the figure at 242 lost out of 378, Commander Task Group 34.9, Report on Operation Torch, serial 003052 of 30 Novem ber 1942, OA, NHD. "Administrative History, Cinclant, Amphibious Training Command," l:chap. 7, p. 37, says 216 were lost of the 629 in the entire Western Task Force.
49 Commander, Task Force 34, Report on Material and Logistics, Operation Torch, pp. 2-5, serial 00243 of 27 November 1942, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Hewitt's Report on Material and Logistics); Com mander, Amphibious Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, Torch Operations— Comments and Recommendations, p. 15, serial 00299 of 22 December 1942, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Hewitt's Comments and Recommendations).
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Naval gunfire support of amphibious landings was still in a
rudimentary state. No prelanding bombardment softened enemy defenses;
and, after the battle began, fire support ships followed standard
naval practice of maneuvering at high speeds at great distances while
delivering fire. The destroyers, for example, closed the beaches to
10,000 yards, while the Massachusetts ranged from 20,000 to 32,000
yards. Shore fire control parties and spotter planes did assist in
directing fire, especially against shore batteries.More effective
against the French navy than against land targets, the ships' guns were
not used to their full potential in assisting the landing force at
Casablanca. In the northern attack area, however, naval gunfire did
silence some inland enemy batteries and heavily damaged a truck column
laden with enemy troops, showing that support from the ships could aid
in ground battles.
A concomitant problem revolved around the alarming ineffective
ness of naval ammunition: many of the shells that hit land and sea
targets failed to explode. Both Hewitt and Hutchins criticized the
performance of the eight-inch armor-piercing projectiles (A.P.s) fired
by the Augusta, the Tuscaloosa, and the Wichita against shore targets
Massachusetts Action Report, enclosure A, pp. 2-4; Hewitt's Comments and Recommendations, pp. 1-3; I. E. McMillian, "The Develop ment of Naval Gunfire Support of Amphibious Operations," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 74 (January 1948):5 (hereafter cited as McMillian, "Development of Naval Gunfire Support"). Patton referred to naval gunfire support as "a very weak reed on which to lean. It is too inaccurate, and they will not get close enough [to shore]." Quoted in Blumenson, Patton Papers, p. 135.
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and French light forces. Although Hewict found the six-inch high-
capacity projectiles (H.C.s) used by the Savannah and the Philadelphia
excellent and acknowledged the effectiveness of the destroyers' five-
inch anti-aircraft shells in close supporting fire, he roundly
criticized the high proportion of duds from the sixteen-inch armor-
piercing shells fired by the Massachusetts. He pointed out that the
navy must have high-capacity shells with instantaneous acting fuses for
the neutralization of land fortifications.^^
Months later, as Hall planned the amphibious invasion of
Sicily, he pursued the ammunition problem by writing to Rear Admiral
W. H. P. Blandy, chief of the Bureau of Naval Ordnance. Hall's bomb
disposal officer in Casablanca had brought him fuses from sixteen-inch
armor-piercing duds from the Jean Bart, from the paved streets of
Casablanca, from the S.S. Savoie, and from a sunken drydock. The bomb
expert also found fourteen-inch duds from the New York and the Texas
and said that the fuses he took from the unexploded shells at Port
Lyautey had been in those projectiles since 1918. The navy had not
reworked the fourteen-inch ammunition since preparing it for Rear
Admiral Charles P. Plunkett's railway batteries in France in World
War I. Hall found it humiliating to hear that officers of the U.S. Army
and of the French navy were spreading rumors of sixty known duds, two
of which were mounted at the entrance to French naval headquarters, in
^^Hewitt's Comments and Recommendations, pp. 5-6; Massachusetts Action Report, enclosure H, p. 9.
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Casablanca. He urged the expediting of the new high-capacity bombard
ment ammunition and hoped it would be as effective as that which the
Japanese had used at Henderson Field, Guadalcanal. In his reply Blandy
acknowledged that the fourteen-inch ammunition "stunk pretty high" but
said that the sixteen-inch A.P.s tested successfully eighty-nine out
of ninety times at the proving ground. He planned to test all types
52 of service ammunition annually.
Another method of delivering supporting fire power to assist
the land operations came from McWhorter's carrier planes, which suc
ceeded in destroying enemy installations and providing cover for
troops on the beaches. Unfortunately, the number of duds among the
hundred-pound bombs used by naval aircraft lessened the effectiveness
of the air support. Although the value of navy-controlled air support
seemed obvious, no future amphibious landings in the European theater
would enjoy the use of American carrier planes under the direction of
the task force commander.
Communications, vital in any military operation, proved less
than adequate in Torch. The Augusta herself was not large enough for
the required equipment and personnel for a joint and combined landing.
Her role as a fire support ship and the resulting shock of her own
gunfire caused impairment of essential communications gear. These
malfunctions, along with overloaded circuitry and inexperienced
^^JLH to Rear Adm. W. H. P. Blandy, 5 May and 8 June 1943; Blandy to JLH, 15 May 1943, Correspondence: 1943 file, JLH Papers. An earlier exchange of letters, indicated by the correspondence, was not in the file.
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personnel, hampered shiprto-shore and ship-torair contact. Radio equip
ment used by landing craft crews often did not work at all.
In addition to bearing the responsibility for communications,
the Augusta housed the top leadership for the assault. With both Patton
and Hewitt aboard, the danger of participating in engagements with
enemy ships demonstrated that an amphibious flagship should not be a
combatant vessel,Amphibious command ships (AGCs) were not yet
available.
Still another cause for concern involved the assault troops
themselves: all needed more training in amphibious landings. Men of
both services had been overburdened with excess equipment, which caused
many soldiers and sailors to drown or to become fatigued trying to get
ashore. "Commando" units, carrying a minimum of equipment, would be
preferable for the first attack waves; the heavier supplies could come
ashore later.
Although the determined French resistance had slowed the
unloading of supplies across the beaches on D-Day, much of the conges^
tion in the assault area came from incompetence in unloading craft and
moving supplies to inland dumps. Army shore parties had not provided
adequate manpower to unload the landing craft, and boat crews often
53 Augusta Action Report, enclosure I, pp. 1-3; Hewitt's Comments and Recommendations, pp. 16-17.
^^JLH interview, 7 October 1976.
^^Hewitt's Comments and Recommendations, p. 25.
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emptied the craft themselves, Insufficient personnel to carry the
stores inland caused more pileups on the beaches. Even with highly
specialized training for both shore and beach parties, congestion on
the beaches would continue to hamper the effectiveness of subsequent
amphibious landings.
In spite of its numerous shortcomings and deficiencies. Opera
tion Torch succeeded in a spectacular manner. The first major amphib
ious assault since the Gallipoli landings in World War I, the attack
was a highly complex undertaking for which planning, preparation, and
mounting had taken place in both the United States and Britain. As
usual in warfare, luck played an important role: the Allies were
fortunate that the weather was comparatively mild, that the French
forces were not stronger and that they agreed to a speedy armistice
and subsequent cooperation, that the only German intervention came
from scattered submarine attacks, and that the assault forces preserved
the element of surprise. In an operation so hastily conceived, planned,
and executed. Allied armed forces, still green in amphibious warfare,
generally performed with competence. Strategically, the operation
proved sound and ultimately enabled Patton's army, in conjunction with
British forces moving west from Egypt, to expel the Germans and
Italians from North Africa. It also was a necessary prelude to the
Allied invasion of Italy.
^^Shepard’s Report, Torch, pp. 28-30.
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On a larger scale. Torch demonstrated that massive amphibious
landings on hostile shores were a feasible, though unprecedented,
method of combating the enemy. It suggested that similar lodgements
could be made on the European continent, enabling the Allies to pro
ject their power directly against Germany and Italy, Settling on a
strategy that compromised both British and American concepts of the
most effective way to fight the European war, the Allies sustained
and strengthened their often wobbly coalition and proved that combined
operations could produce desired results. In the conduct of modern
warfare. Operation Torch was a novel experiment— an experiment that
succeeded.
Sea Frontier Forces, Western Task Force
After the French surrender, the Western Naval Task Force began
to execute the second part of its mission: to establish the sea
frontier forces. Hall's command would route and escort shipping in the
nearby seas, provide air and sea patrols against submarines, and con
trol the base and harbor facilities and naval forces at Casablanca,
Fedala, Safi, and Port Lyautey.
The first group of Hall's men landed at Fedala, Safi, and Port
Lyautey on D-Day and assisted in the unloading of ships. On 11 Novem
ber, even before the fighting stopped. Hall sent a team ashore, with
his fuel oil coordinator, to remove four seventy-five pound dynamite
57 Operation Plan A-42.
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charges from the French fuel tank farm at Casablanca. The French were
ready to blow up the tanks, and this swift action prevented even more
damage to Casablanca harbor. That same day. Captain H. G. Sickel, who
would command the naval operating base, Casablanca, made a reconnais
sance trip to Casablanca to survey the harbor facilities and battle
58 d a m a g e .
On the day of the French surrender the first contingent of 33
officers and 188 men slated for the Casablanca base arrived from Fedala,
and the work of clearing the harbor began. Casablanca is not a
natural harbor; it is man-made. The French had used 150-ton concrete
blocks, which had to be replaced often because of breakwater damage,
to create the harbor. Both the American and French forces had caused
considerable damage to the port; and, in addition to vessels damaged
in the sea battles, at least nine ships lay sunk there. Since the
Augusta was now moored at Casablanca, Hall was able to direct the
early work of force from the ship. He established a post to control
ships' entrance to the harbor and installed two-way radio equipment
for contact with Fedala. The Casablanca base also prepared to unload
59 naval transports by barge, tank lighter, and landing craft.
58 8-11 November 1942, War Diary: Commander Moroccan Sea Frontier (prior to 17 February 1943 this command was known as Sea Frontier Forces, Western Task Force), 19 November 1942-30 June 1943, vol. 1, DA, NHD (hereafter cited as War Diary, Sea Frontier); Shepard's Report, Torch, p. 72.
59 12 November 1942, War Diary, Sea Frontier; JLH Oral History, pp. 113, 118.
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During the next few days Hall brought some of the transports
anchored off Fedala into Casablanca for more rapid unloading. When the
naval air stations at Port Lyautey and Casablanca began operating on
13 November, air patrols of harbor and coastal waters reduced the
menace of lurking German submarines. Minefields quickly laid off
Fedala and Casablanca provided additional protection for the ships.
Anticipating the coming of the D-plus-five-day convoy. Hall's force
worked swiftly in taking the initial steps to clear Casablanca harbor.
The convoy, consisting of sixteen ships and ten escort vessels carrying
troops and supplies, arrived on 18 November, after standing off near
Madeira for four days, and brought with it 99 officers and 308 men to
join Hall's command.
On 20 November, the day after Hall was detached as chief of
staff, Hewitt sailed in the Augusta for the United States. Believing
that the task force commander was a successful, effective naval officer.
Hall had found him to be a compatible working companion. The two men
would soon serve together again. Hall then reported to Patton, who
now had command of the Western Task Force, although administratively
Hall remained under the command of Ingersoll's Atlantic Fleet.
When Hall established his headquarters at Casablanca, his sea
frontier forces had three components. Commander A. G. Cooke, Jr.,
^^13-18 November 1942, War Diary, Sea Frontier; Hewitt's Action Report, Torch.
61 JLH interview, 30 October 1976.
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headed the eight-ship minecraft squadron that performed escort duties.
The patrol wing, commanded by Commander H. M. Briggs, consisted of the
squadrons at Port Lyautey and at Casablanca. Under Captain H. G.
Sickel, the Naval Operating Base at Casablanca oversaw the Fedala and
Safi bases and supervised salvage and construction.^^
The unloading of the supplies for army-navy use ran far behind
schedule. Earlier army estimates had been optimistically founded on
the use of nine unloading berths at Quai de Commerce in Casablanca, on
the survival and effective use of all landing craft, and on the use of
local facilities. In actuality, no berths were clear, landing craft
casualties were high, and local floating equipment was limited to four
63 tugs at Casablanca and one at Safi.
At least nine ships had been sunk in Casablanca harbor, and
other merchant ships, damaged in the assault, cluttered the waters at
Safi and Fedala. To get the harbors completely open, Hall had requested
the assistance of an expert in salvage and specialized men and equip
ment. Captain William A. Sullivan and six officers arrived at
Casablanca on the twenty-third to supervise salvage. Sullivan thought
he could get the clean-up operations organized in about two months.
^^19 November 1942, War Diary, Sea Frontier.
^^JLH to Adm. R. E. Ingersoll, 24 November 1942, Correspondence: 1942 file, JLH Papers.
^^Hewitt's Action Report, Torch; 23 November 1943, War Diary, Sea Frontier; Morison. North African Waters, pp. 247-50. Capt. Edward Ells- burg, who became chief salvage officer in the Torch area, described salvage operations in No Banners, No Bugles (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1949).
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In spite of the debris remaining in the harbors, men at the
Casablanca base smoothly handled the arrival of the convoy on 18 Novem
ber (this was the convoy originally slated for arrival on D-plus-five-
day), but unloading was still slow. Subsequent convoys were emptied
more rapidly as harbor clearing progressed. By mid-December Hall's
forces had salvaged the steamship lie d'Ouessant and returned it to the
French and had raised their large floating drydock and had begun to
repair it. Hall's men had started work on the cargo ship Electra
and on the Italian merchantship San Pietro, now a U.S. prize of war,
and had made partial surveys of other sunken vessels. The French had
salvaged the destroyer Albatros, floated the Jean Bart, and agreed to
salvage the French ships in Casablanca, with American assistance. At
Port Lyautey, five of the dozen scuttled ships had been salvaged. By
mid-January the salvage units had floated several other ships.
In addition to salvage operations, Sickel's base at Casablanca
and the subsidiary units at Fedala and Safi had other demanding tasks.
After putting their bases in working condition, they were responsible
for communications with Washington, for guarding the harbors, and for
defending the shipping.They laid protective minefields at Casa
blanca and Fedala and escorted convoys in and out of the Casablanca
area. Another convoy, which arrived on 25 November, brought eight
^^Reports of 18 December 1942 and 11 January 1943, War Diary, Sea Frontier
66 Operation Plan A-42.
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submarine chasers, eight patrol craft, nine motor minesweepers, two
repair ships and a net tender to swell the force.
Aiding in protecting the American naval establishment were
aircraft. The two sea plane patrol wings at Casablanca and Port
Lyautey routinely reconnoitered, but these amphibian PBY-5As had only
a 300-mile range, which hampered effective patrolling for American
convoys and for Allied shipping. Before the Torch invasion Eisenhower
had recommended that twelve B-17s and four B-24s be sent to Britain
and then transferred to Casablanca and Oran when the airfields were
serviceable to assist with antisubmarine patrols.After Hall later
discovered that the British Admiralty, which wanted the planes kept
in Britain, prevented the delivery of the bombers to his sea frontier,
he sent a personal emissary directly to King to reveal the British
reluctance to release the planes. Hall considered this a step backwards
for Anglo-American harmony. King acted quickly, and the B-24s reached
North Africa in March. Soon proving their worth, the bombers sank an
enemy submarine off the Canary Islands.
During these months the Germans made one air attack on Casa
blanca. Early in the morning of 31 December about six planes bombed
^^25 November 1942, War Diary, Sea Frontier.
^®Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to AGWAR, 21 October 1942, Records, Northwest African Waters, enclosure I.
^^JLH to Rear Adm. Frank L, Lowry, 7 February 1943; Lowry to JLH, 25 March 1943, JLH to Ingersoll, 4 April 1943, Correspondence: 1943 file, JLH Papers.
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the harbor, with no damage to the shipping. Army anti-aircraft
installations and ships in the harbor opened fire but did not hit the
enemy aircraft. Within the next few days other unidentified planes
approached Casablanca, Fedala, and Port Lyautey, but no enemy action
developed.Fortunately, the Atlantic shores of North Africa were
not within easy striking range of Axis aircraft, the nearest of which
were based in Tunisia.
As Hall's sea frontier forces settled into their routine duties,
the admiral had other responsibilities in dealing with the defeated
French. The damaged Jean Bart helped congest the Casablanca harbor,
and the ship presented a ticklish problem for political, sentimental,
and physical reasons. Hall did not want to jeopardize shaky American
relations with the French, who greatly admired the magnificent new
battleship, but the vessel occupied dock space alongside Quai de
Commerce. The French had raised the ship, which had been sufficiently
damaged in the naval battles at Casablanca that her stern sat on the
bottom of the shallow harbor. With Sullivan's concurrence. Hall
thought the most practical solution would be to tow the battleship
past the 100-fathom curve and sink her in deep water, and he suggested
to Patton that Eisenhower could possibly convince the French high
^^31 December 1942, 1 and 4 January 1943, War Diary, Sea Fr o n t i e r .
^^Howe, Northwest Africa, pp. 254-57. The Germans had gotten the approval of the Vichy government to move planes and troops into Tunisia at the time of the Allied invasion.
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72 command to request the navy to scuttle the ship. Nothing came of
the idea, however, and after the war the Jean Bart returned to France.
In addition to the Jean Bart problem. Hall had numerous con
tacts with the French. Within a few days of their surrender, the
French naval authorities became more friendly and cooperative. They
organized an American Affairs Bureau to help in the harbor and agreed
to remove the merchant vessels at Casablanca and to allow the use of
French tugs and pilots for the expected American convoy. Retaining
its ships and coastal and anti-aircraft batteries, a large organization
operated the French naval station at Casablanca. It was somewhat top-
heavy with brass: in addition to Admiral Michelier, who now commanded
all French naval forces in North Africa, there were four rear admirals
in port. Hall realized that these French officers were confused
about their future status and their personal security and tried to
73 conduct naval business with them as tactfully as possible. Patton
and Hall attended a memorial service honoring the French and American
dead on 24 November. Many officers, troops, and local dignitaries
also came.
Although their attitude was generally one of service, the
French could be demanding. To help with rehabilitation, Roosevelt
wanted the United States to assume responsibility for paying the
79 JLH to Patton, 16 December 1942, Correspondence: 1942 file, JLH Papers.
73 JLH to Ingersoll, 24 November 1942; JLH to Rear Adm. Bernard H. Bieri, 25 November 1942, ibid.
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salaries of the French navy under Michelier's command, so Hall arranged
for Michelier's chief of staff. Rear Admiral Misoffe, to work out the
details. Michelier rejected the plan and suggested instead that the
United States refit the Jean Bart, the battleship Richelieu, and
several destroyers. He drew up an exacting list of requirements for
the overhauls. At the time of the Casablanca Conference, Hall secured
Admiral■King’s approval for some of the refitting, and Michelier and
Hall arranged to send several of the ships to the United States for
repair.Later Michelier requested radar equipment and very short
wave radio transmitters and receivers for French ships participating
in Allied convoy duty from Dakar to Gibraltar. Recommending approval.
Hall sent the admiral’s request to the Navy Department. As an added
inducement for French cooperation, in early January pilots at the air
station at Casablanca began giving ten-day training sessions to French
naval aviators in PBY-5A (Catalina) planes.
Economically, the French, as well as the native Moroccans, had
suffered badly from the German Armistice Commission's thorough bleeding
of the country. Hall met with Rear Admiral Ronarc'h, commander of
the local French naval defenses, on 20 November to discuss the most
urgent needs of Morocco. Shortly afterward Lieutenant Commander
^ Payment of French Men-of-War Personnel file, JLH Papers; JLH Oral History, pp. 119-20; Marcel Vigneras, Rearming the French, in United States Army in World War II; Special Studies (Washington, D.C. Government Printing Office, 1957), p. 217.
^^Vice-Adm. d'Escardre F. Michelier to JLH, 6 February 1943, Correspondence; 1943 file, JLH Papers.
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Begouen-Demeaux, chief of the Bureau of American Affairs, sent Hall a
list of necessary supplies, including foodstuffs, combustibles, indus
trial products, trucks, agricultural tools, pharmaceutical supplies,
glass and metal products, and building supplies.The United States
government was not responsive to the French needs.
In addition to these serious problems, French officers could
not help needling American naval officers about the sixteen-inch
"duds" that they had fired into Casablanca. Michelier offered to
release the shells if the U.S. Navy could transport them to America.
General Nogues, while showing Hall the wreckage of his home, pointed
to the nose of a sixteen-inch projectile. Although Hall intimated
that the warships had fired target practice shells into Casablanca to
demonstrate their marksmanship, no one accepted the story.
Hall's dealings with the French after their surrender exem
plified the American policy of securing the support of Vichy forces in
North Africa to join in the grand coalition fighting the Axis. Not
wishing to antagonize the French, whose loyalty eased the Allied
^^Resume of subjects discussed at the conference between Rear Adm. John L. Hall and Rear Adm. Ronarc'h, 20 November 1942, Miscel laneous file; Lt. Cdr. Begouen-Demeaux to JLH, 23 November 1942, Correspondence: 1942 file, ibid.
^^Michelier to JLH, 30 November 1942; JLH to Ingersoll, 24 Novem ber 1942, Correspondence: 1942 file, ibid. Years later, the Moroccan government found another sixteen-inch dud in Casablanca harbor and got the U.S. Navy to remove it. See Report on an August 1960 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Operation in Casablanca, Morocco, NOF/EF 46:RAR:le of 14 September 1960, OA, NHD.
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occupation of North Africa, Hall established a friendly working rela
tionship with French naval officers and tried to meet their requests
for military and economic aid.
While maintaining a cordial understanding with the French, the
American commanders also had to establish good relations with the Arab
population, especially the Sultan of Morocco in Rabat. Patton, as the
senior American officer in French Northwest Africa, bore the main
responsibility for this diplomatic task, which Hall also shared. The
Pasha of Casablanca invited Hall to his palace for a meal, and on
12 January Patton and Hall escorted the Sultan and his cabinet on a
tour of military and naval facilities, including the port at Casablanca,
the Jean Bart, and the destroyer Wainwright. At a luncheon given by
the Sultan the next day. His Majesty decorated both Hall and Patton
78 as Grand Officers in the Moroccan Order of Ouissam Alaouite.
While Hall was at Casablanca, diplomacy on the highest level
took place, and the city became the site of a meeting of Churchill,
Roosevelt, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff in January 1943. After
adopting a policy of demanding the unconditional surrender of the Axis,
these strategists mapped some of the forthcoming major campaigns
against the enemy powers, again giving top priority to the defeat of
Germany. Although the planners discussed the reconquest of Burma, a
cross-channel invasion, and stepped-up offensive operations in the
78 Blumenson, Patton Papers, p. 151; 12 and 13 January 1943, War Diary, Sea Frontier.
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Pacific, they made the decision to invade Sicily in the early summer
of 1943. Such a move would mean the postponement of a cross-channel
invasion until 1944,^^
Neither Patton nor Hall attended the Casablanca Conference,
although they had to make the necessary arrangements for accommodating
and protecting the participants. Hall's main job was keeping the
harbor secure so that German submarines could not come in and shell
the participants, while Patton was more active in meeting and talking
with the visiting dignitaries.Hall did entertain Admiral King and
his chief of plans, Rear Admiral Charles M. Cooke, Jr., and his
personal secretary. Commander R. E. Libby, at his home one evening.®^
Of more importance to Hall's future activities was a dinner he
attended, given by Patton on 25 January for King and Cooke. Much to
Hall’s embarrassment, Patton told King that he wanted Hall as his naval
commander if he ever had another joint operation. King, of course,
knew of the plans for Sicily, although Patton and Hall did not. The
next day King asked Hall when he could turn over his command to his
chief of staff or to the British. Knowing of the French-British
^^Mason, "Amphibious Warfare," chap. 6, pp. 3, 5-6, 31, 46.
80 Blumenson, Patton Papers, pp. 152-63.
81 King to JLH, 23 January 1943, Correspondence: 1943 file, JLH Papers.
82 Diary Entry, 25 January 1943: "Admirals King, Cooke, Hall came to dinner, and I had a chance to tell how good Hall is, which is true." In Blumenson, Patton Papers, p. 160.
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animosity. Hall felt that his own chief of staff. Captain C. L. Nichols,
would be the better choice. When Hall remarked that he should like to
go to the Pacific and fight the kind of war for which he had been
trained, King replied that he would be in the Mediterranean for a long
83 time. Soon after King returned to Washington, Hall received orders
to report to Eisenhower in Algiers for duty as commander of the Amphib
ious Force, Northwest African Waters. Preparations for the invasion
of Sicily were to begin.
When Hall left Casablanca on 10 February, his sea frontier
forces totalled about 5,600 officers and men. In the brief three
months since the North African invasion, they had carried out their
initial objectives of establishing bases and sections, clearing harbors,
patrolling the adjacent Atlantic waters by sea and air, escorting
convoys and shipping, and aiding in the defense of the French Moroccan
area. Casablanca had become a bustling, secure point of entry for the
men and materiel sent overland for the campaign against the Germans
and Italians. Hall later received the Distinguished Service Medal for
his services during and after the North African landing. He also drew
praise from a British officer attending the Casablanca Conference.
Admiral Cunningham wrote that Hall "was a fine type of officer of
commanding appearance and manner, and most able and splendid in
cooperation.. He had the port in hand and running smoothly.
oo JLH interview, 23 October 1976.
®^Cunningham, Sailor's Odyssey, p. 516.
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Hall's role in Operation Torch encapsulated many of the problems
involved in executing joint and combined warfare. In the preparation
stages, he had experienced the pressures and frustrations of inadequate
time and ill-trained personnel. While serving as Hewitt's chief of
staff during the assault, he had observed and assisted in all phases
of the attack. He maintained a good relationship with the army, in
the person of Patton, during the voyage and later as commander of the
sea frontier forces. At the surrender conference and in the following
months he had helped strengthen American ties with the French. By
quickly and efficiently establishing and running the complex sea
frontier forces, he contributed to the security of the Atlantic coast
of French Morocco and to the buildup; of Allied armies fighting in the
African deserts. For Hall, as well as for other naval commanders.
Operation Torch was a vital learning experience in the conduct of
amphibious warfare.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER III
OPERATION HUSKY: SICILY
Background
At the Casablanca Conference, 14-23 January 1943, Roosevelt,
Churchill, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff had reached an agreement
that the next Anglo-American amphibious operation would be directed
against the island of Sicily— a major commitment to the extension of
American military force into the Mediterranean. The Allied decision
had not been reached without acrimony, however; American planners had
tried to prevent a move into the Mediterranean that would postpone a
cross-channel invasion in 1943 and would lessen the resources available
for warfare in the Pacific.
Meeting with Roosevelt in early January, the Joint Chiefs of
Staff had no clear strategic plan to advance at the Casablanca meeting.
Marshall continued to advocate a sustained buildup for an assault
through France; King showed more interest in the Far East; the
president took no stand. The shipping shortage loomed large, and the
use of American troops after the Tunisian campaign posed another
problem.^ In contrast, Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff
^Albert N. Garland and Howard McGaw Smyth, Sicily and the Surrender of Italy, in United States Army in World War II: The
89
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argued persuasively at the conference that the capture of Sicily would
make the Mediterranean safer for shipping, ease the German pressure on
the Russian front by drawing off Nazi troops, encourage Italy to
9 surrender, and possibly draw Turkey to the Allied side. Field Marshal
Sir Alan Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff, persistently
wore down American opposition to pushing into the Mediterranean,
although the Joint Chiefs thought such a move was irrelevant and
3 diversionary. Lacking a firm American position on strategy, Roosevelt
finally accepted the British arguments that Allied forces in North
Africa should be used for a quick move against Sicily in July 1943.^
Although the grand strategists made the choice for Sicily
("Operation Husky"), they arrived at no agreement on whether the con
tinued strikes on the Axis periphery or the cross-channel approach was
the best way to win the European war. They did not adopt plans for
operations after the Sicilian venture but did approve of heavy
Mediterranean Theater of Operations (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1965), pp. 7-8 (hereafter cited as Garland and Smyth, Sicily) .
2 Stephen W. Roskill, The Offensive: Part I, 1st June 1943- 31 May 1944 (London: HMSO, 1960), p. 112 (hereafter cited as Roskill, The Offensive: Part I).
3 Trumbull Higgins, Soft Underbelly; The Anglo-American Contro versy over the Italian Campaign, 1939-1945 (New York : The Macmillan Co., 1968), pp. 31, 45-46 (hereafter cited as Higgins, Soft Underbelly).
^"Mark A. Stoler, The Politics of the Second Front: American Military Planning and Diplomacy in Coalition Warfare: 1941-1943 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977), p. 74 (hereafter cited as Stoler, Politics of the Second Front).
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round-the-clock bombing of Germany by American and British planes based
in the United Kingdom.^
Military planners wrestled with proposals for Operation Husky
throughout the winter and spring of 1943, and the final plan of 13 May
projected the landing of Patton's Seventh Army between Licata and
Scoglitti at the same time that Lieutenant General Bernard L. Mont
gomery's Eighth Army attacked the Pachino Peninsula and in the Gulf of
Noto. The objectives of the invasion were to secure the beachheads
and nearby airfields and the ports of Syracuse and Licata, to capture
the Augusta, Catania, and Gerbini airfields, and eventually to seize
the entire island. Vice Admiral Hewitt would transport Patton's troops,
supported by the U.S, Army Air Forces under Colonel T. J. Hickey, in
the Western Task Force, while Vice Admiral Sir Bertram H. Ramsay
lifted Montgomery's army, with Air Vice Marshal Sir Harry Broadhurst
commanding air support, in the Eastern Task Force. These amphibious
landings, slated for 10 July, would have no harbors for immediate
supply of the ground troops.&
Once again, the Combined Chiefs of Staff named Eisenhower as
Maurice Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare; 1943-1944, in United States Army in World War II; The War Department (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1959), pp. 28, 30, 38 (hereafter cited as Matloff, Strategic Planning: 1943-1944).
^Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Opera tions in World War II, vol. 9; Sicily— Salerno— Anzio: January 1943- June 1944 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1954), pp. 19-20, 26 (hereafter cited as Morison, Sicily— Salerno?— Anzio).
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supreme commander for the operation. Britishers shared the second
echelon: General Sir Harold R. Alexander would serve as Eisenhower's
deputy and would command the ground forces; Admiral Cunningham would
head the naval forces; and Air Chief Marshal Arthur W. Tedder would
be responsible for air support. Differing from the Torch invasion in
which Eisenhower had held the centralized command position, the new
command structure in effect gave the three British subordinates opera
tional control over their own particular services in the combined
invasion of Sicily.^
Preparation
Long before the army command issued its plan for the reduction
of Sicily, the U.S. Navy had begun preparing for its amphibious role
in potential Mediterranean campaigns. As early as November 1942 the
navy had proposed the establishment of a Mediterranean amphibious force g as part of the Atlantic Fleet. On 8 December such a force came into
0 existence but had no ships assigned to it. To expand the naval
presence in the area, on 3 February 1943 Admiral King ordered the
^Garland and Smyth, Sicily, pp. 10-11. These writers stated that Eisenhower was angry because of the instigation of a British "committee system." Cf., British historian S. W. C. Pack, Operation "Husky": The Allied Invasion of Sicily (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1977), p. 22, who said that Eisenhower was delighted to leave the planning details to the British (hereafter cited as Pack, Operation "Husky"). g Gen. George C. Marshall to Eisenhower, 29 November 1942, Records, Northwest African Waters, enclosure M.
^Morison, North African Waters, pp. 250-51, 254.
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creation' of the separate and independent Naval Forces, Northwest
African Waters, with Admiral Hewitt in command. A few weeks later these
forces became the Eighth Fleet. Charged with both setting up the
command and planning the American navy's role in Husky, Hewitt sent
part of his staff ahead of him to Algiers. Following their arrival on
20 February, staff members quickly began the advance work for the dual
assignment.. 10
Joining in these preparations, the newly named commander of the
amphibians of Hewitt's fleet-— Admiral Hall— reached Algiers on 11 Febru
ary for this duty and also to represent Hewitt at Allied headquarters
until Hewitt arrived. For the next month. Hall worked in Algiers and
Oran on plans and procedures for establishing both his own force and
Hewitt's command.Detained in the United States because of illness,
Hewitt had written to Hall with suggestions for amphibious training,
12 including the use of LSTs and LCI(L)s. Hall had never seen one of
the new LSTs, much less train men to handle it. Feeling that he knew
little about amphibious operations, Hall believed that his own
appointment as an amphibious force commander revealed the dearth of
qualified naval officers to manage the new form of warfare and showed
^^"Administrative History; Naval Forces, Northwest African Waters," 1:7-9; History of the Eighth Fleet, p. 15.
^^Orders and Travel, 7 January 1942-27 December 1945 file, JLH Papers.
12 V. Adm. H. Kent Hewitt to JLH, 9 February 1943, Correspondence: 1943 file, JLH Papers. Copy in Papers of H. Kent Hewitt, Personal Letters 1943, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Hewitt Papers).
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1 3 a lack of planning by top naval leaders.
After Hewitt arrived at Algiers on 16 March and activated his
command. Hall announced the organization of the amphibious force. The
purpose of the force, in cooperation with Lieutenant General Mark W.
Clark's Fifth Army and its invasion training center at Arzew, was to
prepare and to train for amphibious operations in the Mediterranean,
beginning with the Sicilian venture. Specifically, Hall's force would
foster amphibious readiness by operating the landing craft, by training
at joint schools, and by providing beach party personnel for the army
shore parties. Headquartered at Oran, the command also would be
responsible for defending the training craft and the advanced amphib-
. 14 lous bases.
Paper organization proved easier than putting the plan into
practice. Wartime shortages of both experienced men and necessary
equipment hampered the rapid development of the amphibious force.
Hall had problems pulling together a staff. He brought several of his
yeomen with him from Casablanca but inherited the bulk of his staff
from Rear Admiral A. C. Bennett, who had briefly held command of the
amphibious forces, Mediterranean. Captain Mays Lewis served as
chief of staff. Captain Walter C. Ansel was operations officer, and
Lieutenant Commander William R. Caruthers served as communications
^®JLH interview, 7 January 1977.
^^Operation Plan A-43, 16 March 1943, Amphibious Operations (U.S. Army Divisions) file, JLH Papers (hereafter cited as Operation Plan A-43).
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officer. Hall got Commander Marion N. Little, who commanded the base
at Mers-el-Kebir, on the operations staff. Little had attended the
Marine Corps schools at Quantico, and he later became Hall’s chief
of staff in the Pacific.There were no army or air force officers
permanently assigned to the staff, although a joint staff would have
facilitated operational preparations.
Hall also had trouble securing a flagship for his force.
Finally, the Samuel Chase, a coast guard transport commanded by
Captain Roger C. Heimer, USCG, arrived at Oran on 19 March with men
and supplies for both the headquarters unit and for building and
maintaining the advanced amphibious training bases. In addition, the
Chase would assist in the training programs by providing landing boats
and crews and by helping to develop landing craft salvage techniques
for the navy, and by demonstrating beach platoon procedures for the
army's invasion training center.More importantly, the transport
would serve as headquarters ship for Hall's attack force in the
Sicilian invasion. Not having the facilities of an amphibious command
ship, the Samuel Chase underwent hasty, makeshift adaptation in the
field. Hall realized the importance of adequate communications cir
cuits and of operations and communications centers in the transport.
^^JLH interview, 15 December 1976.
^^19 March 19^3, War Diary, Amphibious Force, Northwest African Waters, 9 February-30 September 1943, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as War Diary, Amphibious Force); Operation Plan A-43.
T. Boatwright, Jr., to author, 19 July and 5 September 1977. Boatwright was Hall's gunnery officer at Sicily, Salerno, Normandy, and Okinawa.
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As the Samuel Chase underwent conversion while she helped with
amphibious training, that training, as well as craft and boat repair,
proceeded at bases that sprawled from Cherchai, Tenes, Mostaganem,
Arzew, Beni-Saf, and Nemours, to Port Lyautey. For boat maintenance.
Hall would have preferred two or three repair ships instead of these
fixed bases along the North African coast, but this decision had come
18 from Washington. Rear Admiral Richard L. Conolly, who supervised
the landing craft as well as the bases in Hall’s command, had arrived
in Algiers in mid-February, commanding a convoy of landing craft to
be used for training purposes in North Africa. Additional landing
craft convoys arrived during the next few months, and these vessels
represented the latest in amphibious ships; LSTs, LCI(L)s, LCTs, and
the smaller LCVPs and LCSs. During the training period, Conolly, at
Hall's request, experimented with the use of these vessels. Sicily
19 would provide a rigorous test for them.
Another training unit of particular importance fell under the
able direction of Lieutenant Commander Victor T. Boatwright, Jr., who
worked to improve the skill of all naval gunfire support teams. Boat
wright set up a range northeast of Mostaganem where he conducted
gunnery exercises to train army shore fire control parties, naval
gunfire liaison officers, and destroyer gun crews. This close
18 JLH Oral History, pp. 128-29.
^^"Administrative History; Naval Forces, Northwest African Waters," 1:10, 16; 2:74-75.
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20 cooperation and training markedly sharpened naval gunfire proficiency.
In addition to gunnery exercises. Hall's amphibious command
strongly emphasized improved joint communications training. Following
three weeks' training in the amphibious schools, beach battalions and
shore fire control parties gained additional expertise in setting up
beach stations and establishing shore-to-ship communications by
spending two weeks on board the transports and fire support ships.
Hall felt that the combination of land and shipboard training would
increase the understanding and competence of all communications 21 technicians.
As Hall's command expanded during the spring of 1943, the navy's
main objective of preparing for the Sicilian landing involved close
cooperation with the Fifth Army, The two services eventually succeeded
in forming workable methods of amphibious preparation, but the lack
of adequate concepts of joint planning and training slowed and com
plicated these arrangements. As late as April 1942, the army had
argued that it should handle amphibious operations in the Atlantic,
the marines in the Pacific; so it became a primary goal of naval
leaders to convince the army that amphibious training was, by its
20 Boatwright to author, 19 July 1977; JLH interview, 7 January 1977.
21 Commander, Task Force 81, Action Report; Operation "Husky," annex B, pp. 1-4, serial 00179 of 14 August 1943, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Hall's Action Report).
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22 very nature, a function of the navy.
On 14 January Eisenhower had ordered the establishment of the
invasion training center at Arzew. Because the navy had not been able
to move sufficient units into North Africa quickly enough after the
Casablanca decision to invade Sicily, and because no clear directive
detailed array and navy duties, the army had assumed the role of super
vising amphibious training of regimental combat teams and armored
OO divisions' combat commands for the forthcoming operation.
Under the able command of Brigadier General John W. O'Daniel,
the work of the training center was good, but naturally the army often
lacked an understanding of the navy’s problems.Although Conolly
directed the training for landing craft from a nearby chateau off the
Gulf of Arzew, O'Daniel had talked to Hall in Oran as well as with
Conolly about his plans to send the attack forces across the Mediter-
25 ranean in rubber boats! Such a ridiculous scheme would never have
^^JLH interview, 30 December 1976.
23 Adm. A. B. Cunningham to Rear Adm. A. C. Bennett, 31 January 1943, with enclosures of army directives. Amphibious Operations (U.S. Army Divisions) file, JLH Papers.
^^H. Kent Hewitt, "Naval Aspects of the Sicilian Campaign," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 79 (July 1953):707 (here after cited as Hewitt, "Sicilian Campaign"); L. K. Truscott, Jr., Command Missions: A Personal Story (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1954), pp. 182-83 (hereafter cited as Truscott, Command Missions). Hewitt commented in his Oral History, p. 316, that the army had not been able to do much before the navy became involved.
25 JLH Oral History, p. 128; "Reminiscences of Admiral Richard L. Conolly," Oral History Research Office, Columbia University, 1960, p. 139 (hereafter cited as Conolly's Oral History).
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wasted the time of those charged with amphibious training if there had
been clear-cut divisions of responsibility and command before the
Sicilian preparations began, but everyone was still learning to con
duct amphibious warfare. At a conference at Port aux Poules, Patton
settled the rubber boat dispute by announcing that the navy bore the
responsibility of getting the troops ashore in "any damned thing they
wanted to." In order to clarify O'Daniel's thinking. Hall quickly
27 sent him standard amphibious literature, reports, and training plans.
In March the army did agree to discontinue the training of boat crews
and to leave the operation and maintenance of amphibious equipment to
28 the navy, but the transition would not be fully effective until after
the Sicilian invasion.
Other army-navy command problems were evident in all phases of
preparing for Husky. In one incident a general criticized Hewitt about
the naval beach markers, whose visibility and clarity had been the
result of years of naval experience and testing. In other instances.
Hall had to quiet army apprehensions that the navy might seize for its
exclusive use the ports of Arzew, Mers-el-Kebir, and Nemours, or might
26 Conolly's Oral History, p. 140.
27 JLH to Gen. John W. O'Daniel, 10 March 1943, Correspondence; 1943 file, JLH Papers.
^^Freedom to C. G., SOS Natousa, 6 March 1943, Amphibious Doctrine file, JLH Papers; CominCh/C. S, USA Memo, 8 March 1943, quoted in Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, p. 217.
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90 overly congest the vital port of Oran. Such trivia took valuable time
from the joint military objective of preparing to invade Sicily.
More frustrating for Hall than minor problems with the army was
the uncertainty of obtaining sufficient quantities of ships and landing
craft, especially in time to train the troops and to fulfill his
duties of defending the advanced bases. Throughout the early months
of 1943 he was unsure of the numbers or types of craft that would be
used in assault, when they would arrive, or how to transport them to
the line of departure. Craft that did arrive were often diverted for
army use. For training purposes. Hall's force needed numerous smaller
craft such as LCMs and LCSs and more men to handle the larger craft.
By mid-April ships arrived to supplement the escort sweepers, and early
31 in May two more convoys brought necessary landing craft for the force.
As the plans for Husky became firmer, ships and supplies came in vast
profusion, but the earlier days of frustration from lack of information
and materiel complicated naval preparations for the attack.
While these diverse training activities increased in tempo.
29 Hewitt memo, 14 April 1943; Brig. Gen. T. B. Larkin to JLH, 23 and 28 April 1943; JLH to Larkin, 24 April and 1 May 1943, Correspon dence: 1943 file, JLH Papers. Richard M. Leighton, "The Planning for Sicily," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 88 (May 1962):90, 93, states that the army and navy were unable to work together amicably because of "administrative friction," which he found prevalent in Husky (hereafter cited as Leighton, "Planning for Sicily").
30 Hall to Hewitt, 2 March 1943, Amphibious Operations (U.S. Army Divisions) file, JLH Papers.
31 13 and 14 April, 4 and 5 May 1943, War Diary, Amphibious Force.
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array plans finally crystallized, and Alexander, in overall command of
the ground forces, issued orders for the invasion on 19 May. Cunning
ham announced the naval plan on the same day. D-Day for the combined
Operation Husky was set for 10 July, H-Hour at 0245. The chosen day
would allow sufficient moonlight for the army to send paratroopers
into Sicily to seize strategic areas prior to the actual assault but
was unfavorable from the naval standpoint because the moonlight would
silhouette the ships off Sicily's coasts.
After getting the go-ahead only six weeks before the invasion,
Hewitt divided his Western Naval Task Force into three major parts:
Conolly's Licata attack force (called JOSS), Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk's
Scoglitti attack force (named CENT), and Hall's Gela attack force
(called DIME). Hall would land Major General Terry Allen's First
Infantry Division, plus the Second Armored Division combat team and
32 a ranger battalion. Hall not only had the unique responsibility of
all American amphibious training for the operation but also the
preparation for commanding an attack force.
Now Hall and his staff began working more closely with General
Allen, his deputy. Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and their
staff to make concrete plans to get Allen's forces ashore. Allen,
ordered by Patton to strike in the vicinity of Gela and to capture the
Ponte Olivo airfield six miles inland, selected a 5,000-yard stretch
^^Western Naval Task Force Operation Plan No. 2-43, serial 00218 of 26 May 1943, JLH Papers.
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of beach just east of the Gela River as his initial landing site.
Gela, like the other target areas of the assault forces, had no
harbor but only a steel pier extending off shore.
To complicate the amphibious landing further, this coast of
Sicily had many shifting "false beaches" (sand bars) with runnels
(depressions) between the false and actual beaches. Hall's command
had to find a means of getting the cargo from the LSTs across the
runnels, and, fortunately, Conolly was able to assemble the new type
of landing device— pontoon causeways— at Arzew and Bizerta. By
fastening together 5x5x7-foot pontoons into sections measuring 175 by
14 feet and carrying or towing them to Sicily, Conolly's landing
craft and bases group provided an answer to the vexing false beach
problem. Conolly also furnished crews and equipment to help the
33 British construct similar causeways.
As the army and navy devised the assault plans, Hall saw
Patton often. The general greatly admired General Stonewall Jackson,
had been over every battlefield on which Jackson had fought during the
Civil War, and had virtually memorized Colonel G. F. R. Henderson's
biography of Jackson. As the two men wrestled with complex attack
problems. Hall remarked to Patton that when he had an important
^^Morison, Sicily— Salerno— Anzio, pp. 30-31; Lt. Cdr. T. L. Davey to Conolly, 15 July 1943, in Causeways, July-October 1943, series II, folder 30, Comnaveu. Conolly apparently thought of the idea of creating causeways out of pontoons, and, under Hall's title, requested the Navy Department to conduct tests on them in the U.S. See Conolly's Oral History, pp. 131-34, 138.
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decision to make, he must have thought, "What would Jackson do?"
Patton replied, "You!re damned right I do!"^^ Although Hall and Patton
continued their friendly relationship from their Casablanca days,
Hewitt apparently slipped in the general's estimation. Patton found
the naval commander indecisive and wavering in the planning phase of
35 Husky. Planning and training between Hall and Allen and Roosevelt
went smoothly, and Allen did not interfere with or criticize naval
procedures. - Sustained contact between the army and navy far exceeded
that of Torch and represented a new phase in the development of joint
amphibious operations. Even Patton admitted that the training of
troops was as realistic as any he had witnessed.
While Hall worked closely and well with the army during this
planning and preparation stage, he had no idea what to expect in the
way of support from the Army Air Forces; he had no contact with the
paratroop command. Representatives of this branch of the services
did not participate in the joint planning, and the lack of coordination
was eventually to result in tragic consequences. 38
^^JLH interview, 23 March 1977.
35 Blumenson, Patton Papers, is replete with criticisms, e.g., Hewitt was "in his usual mental fog," p. 233; can "only think of objec tions" to the attack plans, p. 244; "cannot decide anything," p. 247; was "in a haze as usual," p. 264; was "a perfect fool," p. 276. Hall strongly disagreed with Patton on his appraisal of Hewitt’s competence.
^^JLH interview, 7 January 1977.
0 7 "^ Blumenson, Patton Papers, p. 250.
38 Hall's Action Report, annex D, p. 1; Garland and Smyth, Sicily, p. 106.
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During the planning phase the army rejected the use of naval
gunfire support before H-Hour, ostensibly to preserve the element of
surprise. But surprise was illusory because bombing and parachute
attacks would obviously herald the approach of the assault force.
Hall often wondered whether the criticism of naval gunfire at Casa
blanca soured Patton and other army leaders on the efficacy of naval
artillery. He felt that many casualties from machine gun fire could
have been avoided during the landings at Sicily if targets in the
beach area had been subjected to the adequate naval gunfire preparation.
As the joint planning reached its final stages, elements of
Hall’s DIME force staged a large-scale rehearsal on 24 June on a beach
west of Algiers. In addition to Allen and Hall, two British generals
were on board the Samuel Chase while Hewitt and Cunningham observed the
exercise from a position closer a s h o r e . T h e rehearsals went fairly
smoothly, although there were many problems. As with most rehearsals,
this one stopped before the most critical period, which corresponded
to the end of any D-Day. Although shore parties and boat crews had
begun to adjust to the pace of unloading the shipping, beaches became
congested and boats disabled, which endangered the flow of supplies.
Hall felt that a rehearsal should require the complete unloading of a
39 Hall's Action Report, annex D, pp. 6-7; Hewitt's Action Report, p. 86.
40 Hewitt to Hall, memo: Observations of Exercise, 24 June 1943, Operation Order G-43 file, JLH Papers; Cunningham, Sailor's Odyssey, p. 546.
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4 1 number of ships and craft.
After the exercise. Generals Allen, Roosevelt, and the two
British army officers joined in a critique of the rehearsal on board
the Samuel Chase. At a subsequent meeting at Allen's headquarters, a
British general said that the British army never expected its navy to
land it within thirty minutes of H-Hour or within fifteen miles of the
appointed beaches anyway. Shocked, Hall arose and solemnly stated that
he would stake his entire thirty years' experience and reputation on
landing Allen's division within three seconds of the correct time and
within five yards of the designated objective. No one believed him,
but it cheered up Allen and his staff.
Shortly afterwards, two air force colonels visted Hall in his
flagship and requested three volunteers from the naval gunfire support
officers to drop with paratroopers of the Eighty-Second Airborne
Division. The army planned to drop paratroopers behind the enemy
defenses around Gela several hours before H-Hour to light fires in back
of the beaches and to capture Ponte Olivo airfield. This was the
first news that Hall had received of any plans for paratroop landings,
and such lack of coordination appeared to Hall to be the essence of
bad planning. He did, however, assign two naval gunfire liaison
officers for the mission to call for naval shore bombardment in the
41 23 June 1943, War Diary, Amphibious Force; Hall's Action Report, annex D, p. 3.
42 JLH Oral History, pp. 261-62; JLH interview, 30 December 1976,
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4 3 area.
After the rehearsal. Hall’s ships returned to Algiers and began
to prepare for combat loading for Operation Husky. Without a control
ling officer with full knowledge of all loading requirements, the
four agencies involved with combat loading— First Infantry Division,
the Mediterranean base section, the British naval and military port
authorities, and the 384th Port Batallion— brokered for space in the
convoy. Of the many last-minute changes in loading plans the air
force's demand for transportation of 600 tons of lOO-octane aviation
gasoline caused the most difficulties. Air force officers had gone
directly to Captain Campbell D. Edgar, Hall's commander of transports,
demanding necessary space for the gasoline and even proposing that it
be deck loaded in tins aboard the transports and LSTs. The risks of
such loading would have been grave, for a near-miss by an enemy bomb
close to a transport could put an entire battalion out of action.
Since it would be many days after D-Day before an airfield would be in
operation, aviation gasoline could be brought in follow-up convoys.
These problems could have been prevented by having all loading plans
approved by the task force commander, by forbidding changes after
loading began, and by limiting materiel carried in attack force ships
43 2 July 1943, War Diary, Amphibious Force; JLH interview, 15 January 1977. Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds.. The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol 2: Europe; Torch to Pointblank, August 1942 to December 1943 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 446, described the plan (hereafter cited as Craven and Cate, Torch to Pointblank).
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44 to what was necessary for the initial assaults.
With the months of planning and training for Operation Husky
drawing to a close, the Allied commanders could be reasonably pleased
with their efforts. At the highest echelons army and navy leaders of
both nations had planned together without major differences.^^ More
difficulties appeared in lower command levels, especially because of
the late date of the army's final assault plan and the frequent changes
of those plans.
The training process represented a marked improvement over the
hasty preparations for Torch,and Hall must be given substantial
credit for energetically establishing and conducting the training
programs in his amphibious force. Beginning with a limited knowledge
of amphibious warfare, he quickly assimilated the requirements and
demands for preparing army and navy participants for seaborne opera
tions. He had initial problems with staff, an inadequate flagship, and
an insufficient number of landing craft and crews. Later difficulties
arose with combat loading and with the air force. His relations with
44 Hall's Action Report, annex D, pp. 14-16.
W. C. Pack, Cunningham the Commander (London: B. T. Batsford, 1974), p. 239, stresses the good relations between Cunningham and Eisenhower and among the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy, Army, and Army Air Forces (hereafter cited as Pack, Cunningham).
Leighton, "Planning for Sicily," p. 101, attributes these problems to "circumstances, inertia, misunderstandings, and petty difficulties."
^^Blumenson, Patton Papers, p. 271; Potter and Nimitz, Sea P o w e r , p. 587.
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the army fluctuated during these months of uncertainty about amphibious
responsibilities, but he worked smoothly with Allen and Roosevelt in
preparing for the attack. By pressing forward with projects of the
Western Naval Task Force such as the on-the-spot conversion of the
Samuel Chase, the refinement of naval gunfire in Boatwright's gunnery
exercises, more thorough communications training, experimentation with
the new landing craft, and the intensive amphibious training programs.
Hall contributed significantly to the developing art of amphibious
warfare.
The Attack
For weeks before the combined forces sailed for their Sicilian
objective, the Army Air Forces had paved the way by the steady bombing
of the airports and harbors in Sicily as well as in Sardinia and
southern Greece and Italy, knocking out part of the Axis potential for
attacking Allied assault forces. This softening up had occurred
simultaneously with the successful British bombardment and capture of
the island of Pantelleria on 11 June. Lying roughly mid-way between
Cape Bon, Tunisia, and the western end of Sicily, Pantellerfa had
served as an Axis fighter plane base, and its fall to the Allies
removed another obstacle to the Husky invasion. The capture of the
small islands of the Pelagie group several days later cleared the
48 Sicilian Straits of the last enemy-held territory.
48 See Morison, North African Waters, chap. 12.
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With these islands in Allied hands, the combined assault forces,
now safer from air attack, sailed on a staggered schedule a few days
before the invasion. Ramsay’s Eastern Naval Task Force, mounted in
Alexandria and several lesser ports between Bengasi and Haifa, con
sisted of 818 ships and beaching craft (LSTs, LCTs, and LCIs) and 715
small landing craft. Hewitt's Western Naval Task Force, staged at
six far-flung Mediterranean ports from Oran to Sfax, had a total of
580 ships and beaching craft and 1,124 landing craft. This vast
armada carried an initial assault force of about 160,000 troops to land
on a 100-mile front and was the largest amphibious attack force thus
far in World War II. The British and Americans could expect to combat
about 350,000 Axis defenders, including 50,000 German troops.
Hall's DIME force, with more than eighty-five vessels, sortied
from Algiers, Bizerte, and Tunis between 6 and 8 July. Hall's flag
ship, the Samuel Chase, carried General Allen and his staff, and Major
General William (Wild Bill) Donovan, who was commanding general of the
Office of Strategic Services.Hewitt, in the attack transport
Monrovia with Patton and his staff on board, accompanied Hall's force.
49 Morison, Sicily— Salerno— Anzio, pp. 61, 148-49; Potter and Nimitz, Sea Power, pp. 586-88. For a cursory account of the whole operation by a British Army major, see G. R. de Beer, "The Sicilian Campaign," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 69 (December 1943):1624-27.
^^Donovan went ashore on D-Day and then directed an OSS unit of two officers and eight enlisted men on Sicily. See History Project, Strategic Services Unit, War Department, The Overseas Targets : War Report of the OSS (New York: Walker & Co., 1976), 2:62.
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Hall's ships and craft rendezvoused on the ninth at Point Yoke, near
the Gozo (Malta) Light, at 1830.^^ During the voyage Hall sent a
message to all hands. Trying to encourage the men as they neared the
battle zone, he signaled: "Our people are confident we will not fail
CO them. I pray and believe the God of battles will help us."
As Hall's force steamed toward Sicily, Hall received by
despatch the air force plans for tactical support and the parachute
53 drop. On the night of 9 July the planes, some pulling gliders, were
to leave their North African bases, make a landfall on the west end
of Malta, go eastward of the Gela beaches for the drop, retire inland
to the westward of Licata, and then go south to return to North Africa.
It was the most confused operation plan Hall had ever read. Since
radio silence had to be maintained during the voyage, there was no way
the navy could protest the plans to fly the transports near the convoy
and assault areas.
For three days Hall's ships had sailed through the calm waters
^Hall's Action Report, pp. 1-3: Operation Order G-43, DIME Attack Force, serial 00129 of 29 June 1943, JLH Papers (hereafter cited as Operation Order G-43).
32visual message from Comphibnaw to T.F. 81, n.d.. Amphibious Messages file, ibid.
53 Hall knew of the parachute drop, but his Operation Order G-43, annex A (air support) reflected no information on the routes the transport planes or the fighter support planes would take.
^^Hall's Action Report, annex D, p. 1; JLH interview, 15 January 1977; Garland and Smyth, Sicily, pp. 117-18; Craven and Cate, Torch to Pointblank, p. 445.
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typical of a Mediterranean summer, but during the forenoon of 9 July
the wind rose sharply and the sea began to swell. By 1630, the wind
caused the smaller craft, particularly the LCIs loaded with troops
and the harbor tugs, to labor in the high seas. The LSTs and LCIs
veered to the southward and eastward and had to maneuver to regain
their approach dispositions, which caused a loss of time. Hall had
to increase convoy speed, and the landing craft, unable to keep up
in the rough seas, fell behind.If the weather continued, the
prospects for a successful landing appeared grim. On Malta, head
quarters for the supreme command, Eisenhower and Cunningham, alarmed
at the potentially hazardous sea, considered postponing the attack.
Hewitt, relying once again on his aerological officer. Lieutenant
Commander R. C. Steere, who had made the accurate forecast during the
storm before the North African landing, believed the winds would die
down by 2200; and Cunningham allowed the naval forces to continue.
The seas and winds did calm.
As Hall's force drew nearer the attack area, enemy searchlights
darted over the waters but were too far away to pick up the convoy
ships. Allen sent Brigadier General Clift Andrus, artillery commander
of the First Division, to ask Hall why he did not shoot out those
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 2-3; annex D, p. 8.
^^Hewitt, "Sicilian Campaign," p. 716; Action Report, Western Naval Task Force; The Sicilian Campaign, pp. 83-84, serial 00872, n.d., JLH Papers (hereafter cited as Hewitt's Action Report); Cunningham, Sailor's Odyssey, pp. 549-50; Clagett, "Hewitt," pp. 393-96.
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lights. Hall replied that his ships had no guns that would shoot
sixty miles. The army command was not alone in its apprehension of
early detection by the enemy and of the near-gale winds and thundering
seas. As Hall stood on the bridge, his operations officer, Ansel,
came to him and predicted that if the Sicilian invasion proceeded it
would be the greatest calamity in history. Hall told him that the
operation would be the greatest victory in history.
Hall's attack force continued on course as the advanced sweepers
went ahead to clear the approach for the transports and for the fire
support area, and the assault ships reached their assigned positions
58 on time, at 0045 on D-Day, 10 July. Kirk's CENT force to the east
arrived at about the same time, but Conolly's JOSS force to the west
fell an hour behind schedule because of the rough weather.
Ahead of Hall's forces lay the five thousand yards of beaches
near Gela. In addition to the false beaches and runnels 175 to 250
feet off shore, the gradual gradient of the shore would hinder the
beaching of the larger landing craft. The firm sand beaches ranged
from five to one hundred yards wide.
When the Gela attack force anchored, flares and fires sil
houetted the entire coast. Army Air Forces planes had bombed the
area, and the paratroopers of the Eighty-second Airborne Division had
started fires, helping the navy in the troublesome problem of beach
^^JLH interviews, 15 December 1976, 7 January 1977.
58 Hall's Action Report, p. 3; annex D, p. 9.
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identification. After the fire support and screening vessels took
position, the LSTs and LCIs arrived shortly after 0100. The sea and
wind were down considerably, and combat loaders immediately began
lowering boats in the transport area. The first attack waves,
59 Lieutenant Colonel William 0. Darby’s Rangers, hit the beaches
exactly on time at 0245, and shortly afterward the Italians began
firing at the troops on the beaches and in the approaching boats. The
destroyers Shubrick and Jeffers opened fire against the batteries and
searchlights that had picked up the forces. Hall got the first
assault waves ashore on all six target beaches with only light
opposition except at Yellow beach where the Twenty-sixth Regimental
Combat Team had landed. At 0400 Hall ordered the light cruisers
Savannah and Boise to begin fire on preassigned targets. As subsequent
assault waves landed, enemy resistance increased in intensity from
both coastal batteries and aircraft. At 0455 the destroyer Maddox,
on screening station, received a direct hit from a dive bomber and
sank within minutes, taking 8 officers and 203 enlisted men down with
her. 6°
Landing operations continued, and after General Allen left
the ship early on D-Day, Hall received a note that the army commander
had written the previous evening, with instructions that it be
delivered on D-Day at H-plus-3 3/4 hours. "The Navy personnel, under
5Q Ladd, Commandos and Rangers, pp. 128-30.
^^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 3-5.
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your efficient leadership, completely fulfilled your optimistic promise
to land every assault unit, per schedule, at exactly the appointed
beaches on the enemy shore,So the navy could get the army to the
right place at the right time!
Unloading went on after the initial assault forces hit the
beaches, but repeated enemy air attacks plagued the troops ashore and
the ships at anchor. Bombing and strafing continued throughout the
invasion, usually with minimal damage, but at 1540 on 11 July a direct
bomb hit on the ammunition-carrying Liberty ship S.S. Robert Rowen
caused her to explode and sink with a fierce pyrotechnique display
that lingered for hours. Other ships and craft sustained damage from
the raids, which went on into the night. Hall’s force had three
ships sunk and five damaged by bombing during the operation.
In the midst of an especially heavy attack, while the wreckage
of the Robert Rowen still burned brightly, Cr-47 transport planes from
the Fifty-second Troop Carrier Wing carrying additional Eighty-second
Airborne Division paratroopers came in off-course over the combat zone.
They had missed their landfall and wandered over Hall’s ships during
the enemy air raids. In the confusion of repelling the air attacks,
naval gunners and army anti-aircraft batteries opened fire on the
unrecognized American planes. Hall received a despatch the next
^^Maj. Gen. Terry Allen to JLH, 9 July 1943, Correspondence: 1943 file, JLH Papers. [Allen’s italics.]
^^Action Report, U.S.S. Samuel Chase (10-12 July 1943), pp. 2-3, no serial, 18 July 1943, OA, NHD; Hall's Action Report, pp. 7, 9.
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morning saying that 23 of the 144 aircraft had been shot down, only
one from enemy fire. Such a tragedy could have been averted by ade
quate coordination in planning between the Army Air Forces and the
army and the navy.
The air cover provided by the Allied air forces did little to
counter enemy attacks, and generally, throughout the Sicilian landings,
air cover was extremely weak. Hall's force was assigned two to eight
planes, which were not always available when needed. During one
attack in broad daylight, thirty-two enemy planes flew over the trans
port area without interference from American fighters. The task force
commanders had no fighter planes under their control; they had to send
a message back to Tactical Air Force headquarters at Tunis, requesting
support. If and when the planes arrived, they were often too late.
63 Ibid., p. 8 and annex D, p. 1; JLH Oral History, pp. 137-38; JLH interview, 7 January 1977. A later board of inquiry never fixed the blame for the catastrophe, but the episode has generated heated historiographical controversy. Garland and Smyth, Sicily, pp. 179-84, point an accusing finger at naval gunners, as does Maj. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, Soldier: The Memoirs of Matthew B. Ridgway, as told to Harold Martin (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), p. 73, and Milton Dank, The Glider Gang: An Eyewitness History of World War II Glider Combat (Philadelphia: J, B. Lippincott Co., 1977), pp. 83-85. Craven and Cate, Torch to Pointblank, p. 453, admit that there was not enough time to inform all naval forces between the time of the decision to send reinforcements and the actual arrival of the transport planes. Defenders of the navy include Morison, Sicilyr— Salerno— Anzio, pp. 120- 21, and his The Two-Ocean War; A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1963), p. 259 (hereafter cited as Morison, Two-Ocean War); and Hewitt, "Sicilian Campaign," p, 719. Less formally, Hewitt, in his Oral History, pp. 355-56, would accept no blame for the navy; and Hall, in an interview, 16 December 1977, put the responsibility squarely on Eisenhower's headquarters for poor planning.
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Unlike the North African campaign, the Husky attack had no carrier air
support— to the detriment of the entire operation.
Air attack was not the only method of enemy resistance to the
DIME force invasion. Three Axis tank columns, one German and two
Italian, converged on Gela early on D-Day. At 0826 the Boise, the
Jeffers, and the Shubrick, responding to a report from a naval spotter
plane, took the Italian tank and infantry columns under fire and
destroyed several tanks and slowed down the rest. Early the next
morning the enemy had regrouped and was joined by the crack Hermann
Goering Panzer Division and began firing on the transports and beaches,
as well as on army positions. The army's tanks were not ashore and
operative before mid-day because of beach difficulties and also
because Patton's order for tanks had gone through army communications
circuits instead of through the naval command structure. In the lull,
naval gunfire and army field artillery came to the rescue. Fire
support ships shelled the approaching forces on the Niscemi and
Ponte Olivo Roads, but by 1100 all the tanks had converged on the
Gela plain, intending to push the invading forces into the sea.^^
Naval gunfire, credited with destroying about twelve tanks and
Hall's Action Report, annex D, pp. 5-6; Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 91-92. Cf., Craven and Cate, Torch to Pointblank, pp. 451-52.
^^Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 5, 8 ; Hall's Action Report, pp. 5, 7. For a full account of the tank battles, see Morison, Sicily— Salerno— Anzio, pp. 109-19, and Garland and Smyth, Sicily, pp. 150-52, 154-55, 166-71.
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damaging many more, played an instrumental role in breaking up the
attack and then in shelling retreating German tanks. With speed and
accuracy the destroyers and cruisers had answered calls for gunfire
against troops, batteries, and tanks— an innovation in naval support
of the troops.During the actions Hall had sent the cruisers in
as close as 3,100 yards to the shore, the destroyers as near as 1,200
yards— another change from the long-range, high-speed firing used off
the North African coast.
Later, General Allen praised naval firepower as a material
factor in the First Division's success in repelling the enemy counter
attack. Another officer wrote: "First Division Artillery recognizes
superior gunnery when it sees it and we are unanimously stating that
the support rendered by Admiral Hall's command has been more than we
could have expected even from the United States Navy."^^ Throughout
the invasion naval gunfire had been effective against shore batteries,
searchlights, and troops, as well as against the tanks; and its
efficiency can, in large measure, be attributed to Commander Boatwright's
training exercises.
^^Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 86-87.
^^Action Reports, U.S.S. Jeffers, p. 13, serial 025 of 15 July
1943; and U.S.S. Boise, range chart, serial 061 of 6 August 1943, OA, NHD.
^^Allen to Patton, 14 July 1943; Brig. Gen. Clift Andrus to Allen, 12 July 1943, Correspondence: 1943 file, JLH Papers. Patton rated naval gunfire support as outstanding, Blumenson, Patton Papers, p. 291.
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Spotter planes, first catapulted off the Savannah and Boise at
dawn on D-Day, had also played a particularly effective role in
directing and controlling the gunfire from the cruisers and destroyers
against enemy tanks and positions. Unfortunately, nearly all of the
light, slow-moving planes, operating without adequate fighter protec
tion, were lost during the Husky operation, but their spirited per
formance proved decisive in the tank counterattack. Not arranged by
earlier planning, this use of naval spotting to call fire to assist
the array's battle was another innovation.^9
As the air and land battles continued, the new landing craft
had their first real test of battle effectiveness. The large LSTs,
carrying tanks, heavy artillery, and soldiers, were designed to
deliver their cargoes ashore quickly and to unload with a minimum of
difficulty. The false beaches off Sicily and the gradual gradient of
the true beaches prevented the ships from running directly onto the
true beaches. Therefore, Hall's force unloaded the LSTs either into
DUKWs or over the pontoon causeways, which required cumbersome equip
ment and made the ships immobile targets for bombing and strafing, or
by placing the smaller LCTs thwartships to the ramp of the LST and
moving the cargo onto one LCT and possibly a second one and then
ashore. Hall believed that the use of a high-speed dredge to open
channels across the false beaches so the LSTs could have gone right
69 'hall’s Action Report, p. 7 ; JLH interview, 12 June 1977,
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in would have been more effective. Altogether, the new ships vastly
improved amphibious landing techniques.
Another new vessel, the LCI(L), designated to carry and land
reserve battalions of regimental combat teams for Hall's force, was
as yet unproven in its ability to discharge troops directly on shore.
Half the craft did so; the others debarked the soldiers into rubber
boats and LCVPs. The LCIs also accelerated the unloading of the trans
ports by carrying stores ashore and served as traffic control boats.
An unexpected and welcomed use of these craft was in salvage work— they
were ideal for the purpose. Mechanically, their ramps were too heavy
and too short, and they had some problems with muffler failures.
The LCT(5)s proved to be a versatile utility craft, but Hall
thought that they should have been mainly used to unload the LSTs and
the transports. Their inadequate sea-keeping qualities slowed them in
convoys, and it would have been better to have towed them to Sicily in
order to keep them with the convoy. After the three-hundred-mile
voyage and two days of operations in the assault area, half of the LCTs
72 had at least one of their three engines out of commission.
Of the smaller landing craft, the LCVPs were generally
^^Hall's Action Report, annex A, p. 2, and annex D, p. 17; Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 52-53, 99.
^^Hall's Action Report, annex A, pp. 2-3, and annex D, p. 18; Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 54, 99.
72 Hall's Action Report, annex A, p. 4, and annex D, pp. 19-20; Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 53-54, 99-100.
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satisfactory and were sturdier than earlier personnel transport boats.
Their major problems involved rudders and other steering gear components.
The LCSs did not perform as well and had difficulties both as sea and
beaching boats because of the gasoline engines, poorly arranged space,
73 and insufficient armor and armaments.
Still another new vehicle, the DUKW, measured up to all expec
tations. A true amphibian, this two-and-one-half-ton army truck pro
pelled itself through the water and then raced over land when it
reached shore. Its potential was exciting for assault landings, for
its use enabled army artillery to begin firing shortly after the
initial landings on D-Day. Launched off shore over ramps of the LSTs,
the DUKWs carried about three tons of light artillery. Hall thought
the vehicles should have armored sides aud cockpits for added protection,
and he later recommended strong, self-contained assault units consisting
of six-davit LSTs carrying LCVPs and DUKWs.
Assisting in unloading the larger landing craft that could not
cross the false beaches, the pontoon causeways were yet another new
amphibious device that served as a bridge from the false beaches across
the runnels. Conolly, whose landing craft and bases outfit had assem
bled the units, noted that the Sicily invasion would not have succeeded
73 Hall's Action Report, annex A, pp. 4-5, and annex D, p. 20.
^^Ibid., annex D, pp. 20-21; Garland and Smyth, Sicily, p. 104.
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75 as well without the causeways.
All of these new craft, boats, DUKWs, and pontoon causeways
represented an enormous improvement for conducting amphibious warfare.
They had been hastily produced and were as yet untried in battle condi
tions before Sicily. They were a vast technological forward step from
the clumsy craft the navy had used in North Africa. Unfortunately,
losses of landing craft were high. When Hall left Sicily, eighty-five
LCVPs, one LCM(3), and one LCS were either lost or stranded on the
beaches. Salvage units of the task force later repaired and returned
to Oran only twenty-nine LCVPs and the LCM(3).^^
No different from the North African invasion, however, was the
breakdown in beach clearing on D-Day. By dark on 10 July, a huge array
of men, equipment, ammunition, trucks, jeeps, and wrecked landing
boats cluttered the six assault beaches. Initially slowed by unexpected
land mines and expected air attacks, the undermanned beach and shore
parties could not move the materiel inland quickly enough, and the
beaches became so congested that there was no room to unload more
landing craft. Salvage operations of damaged craft and boats were also
weak. Naval beach platoons should have remained independent of the
army shore regiments. Hall thought that reorganizing the shore party
labor force and keeping it under the naval command during the initial
^^Garland and Smyth, Sicily, p. 105; Conolly to Chief of Bureau of Yards and Docks, serial 0500 of 27 July 1943, Comnaveu, series II, folder 30.
^^Hall's Action Report, annex A, pp. 5-6.
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assault would break the usual D-Day logjam on the beaches.In addi
tion, the pre-invasion storm had caused a heavy surf, and many of the
smaller boats had broached on shore. Beachmasters also believed that
the lower rank of naval officers (lieutenants and lieutenant j.g.s)
in comparison with their army counterparts (colonels and majors) con-
7 0 tributed to the confusion on the beaches. Nevertheless, by the
evening of 12 July, Hall's force had landed over the open beaches
23,161 men, 3,351 dead-weight tons of cargo, and 1,465 vehicles. The
entire Western Naval Task Force put ashore 66,285 men, 17,766 dead-
79 weight tons of cargo, and 7,396 vehicles.
In still another area there were problems similar to, but not
as severe as, those in the Torch operation: communications. Hall's
flagship handled about 700 army and navy messages— too many for an
assault operation. With only hastily-made improvisations, the Samuel
Chase did not have adequate facilities to meet the extensive communica
tions demands. To maintain control of the nearly 100 vessels and 125
landing craft. Hall had kept the communications plans as simple as
possible, but difficulties with delays and breakdowns in the overloaded
circuitry still occurred. The training program at the amphibious
schools on board ships did, however, produce effective ship-to-shore
^^Ibid., annex D, pp. 12-14.
^^History of the Eighth Fleet, p. 27.
79 Wardlow, Transportation Corps, p. 197.
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8n contacts with the naval shore units.
The Samuel Chase, along with her inadequacies as a communica
tions center, did not have sufficient centralized working space for all
the officers vital to an amphibious attack. The Augusta had shown in
Torch that the force flagship should not be used as a combatant vessel,
and the Chase demonstrated that a transport should not be used as a
81 headquarters ship. At the time of Husky, only one properly fitted
amphibious command ship, the Ancon, had arrived in the Mediterranean;
Kirk used it in his Scoglitti force.
During the Sicilian invasion, army-navy command relations still
had numerous flaws. Hall and Allen apparently had no problems in
working together, but the admiral commented icily that the army
believed that the navy’s sole function was to lift troops. Army
officers tried to issue orders about naval matters such as the disposi
tion of naval vessels and the use of naval gunfire. Hewitt noted that
army interference appeared in planning the operations, loading and
0 0 controlling actions of ships, and issuing orders aboard the ships.
With the assault and unloading phases of Husky completed by
the evening of 12 July, Hewitt left Conolly in command of the forces
remaining off the Sicilian coasts. Their job done, the flagships
80 Hall's Action Report, annex B, pp. 1-4; Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 105, 107-08
81 Hall's Action Report, annex D, pp. 3-4.
B^Ibid., annex D, p. 2; Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 16-17,
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Samuel Chase and Monrovia, along with transports, cargo ships, and
destroyers, sailed for Algiers. After an uneventful passage, they
reached their destination three days later.
Altogether, the attack on Sicily had been a gratifyingly suc
cessful forward step in the conduct of amphibious warfare. On land,
Allen's First Division secured its beachhead and captured its initial
objective of the Ponte Olivo airfield by 12 July, and at 1700 Patton
went ashore to establish his command of the Seventh Army. Other groups
of the Western Naval Task Force triumphed as quickly. To the east,
Kirk's force had put ashore Middleton's Forty-fifth Division near
Scoglitti, and on 11 July Comismo airfield fell to the invaders. With
the capture of the Biscari airfield three days later, Middleton secured
his first objectives. Westward of the Gela area, Conolly's force
landed Truscott's Third Infantry Division near Licata, and by 1130 on
D-Day the army had occupied the town and soon took over the adjacent
83 airfield. Subsequently, as Patton's army moved up the west coast of
Sicily, Hewitt's ships continued to render naval gunfire support of
the ground operations.
In the British sector, Ramsay's Eastern Naval Task Force landed
Montgomery's Eighth Army on four separate beaches. Rapidly securing
the Pachino Peninsula and quickly capturing the port cities of Augusta
83 Morison, Sicily— Salerno— Anzio, pp. 90, 122, 144, 146.
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and Syracuse, Montgomery's forces moved northward.^4 Messina, the
ultimate objective of the entire campaign, would be in Allied hands on
17 August.
Participating in both Operation Torch and Operation Husky, Hall
was favorably impressed with the improvements in amphibious landings
in only eight months' time. Torch had been a tentative first step;
Husky was a more polished example of both combined and joint operations.
Although the army and navy were still in the learning process in
executing amphibious assaults, the coordinated planning between the
two services represented a very positive achievement. In time the Army
Air Forces would be drawn into these pre-invasion planning sessions.
The preparation of the assault forces in the amphibious schools and
training centers in North Africa produced more skillful handling of
landing craft and boats, communications, shore parties, and scouts and
raiders. Of overwhelming importance for this and future amphibious
assaults was the expertise shown by naval gunfire teams in supporting
army operations after the soldiers had landed. After the duel between
German tanks and American cruisers and destroyers at Gela, naval
gunnery would no longer be considered as inconsequential by the army.
The arrival of the new types of landing craft and boats augmented
Allied striking power by ensuring the swift unloading of men and
materiel for any seaborne attack.
^^For an account of the British operations, see Pack, Operation
"Husky," pp. 89- 118; and Roskill, The Offensive; Part I, pp, 128t 33 .
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In addition, the Sicily campaign contributed to a standardiza
tion of amphibious tactics in the Mediterranean. The element of
surprise, achieved by night landings (southern France was the only
daylight assault in the Mediterranean), would be maintained, and this
ruled out preliminary naval bombardment to destroy defense installa
tions ashore. A combination of ship-to-shore and shore-to-shore use
of landing craft to ferry the troops to the beaches became routine.
The Germans, whose forces were spread too thinly for a concentrated
shore defense line, had to rely on their mobility to shift their
troops rapidly; and this factor increased Allied emphasis on pushing
across beach defenses and securing the initial objectives before the
QC enemy could marshal its forces.
Hall's contribution to the success of the combined invasion
of Sicily lay in his performance as the commander of the Amphibious
Force, Northwest African Waters, and in his effective handling of the
Gela attack force. He established and conducted the amphibious
training program for Hewitt's Mediterranean operations. For the Sicily
invasion, he led his convoy through the pre-invasion storm and landed
the assault troops on schedule. Acting aggressively to repel the
German tank and infantry attacks, he sent his fire support ships close
to shore to deliver bombardment. His use of naval spotter planes to
call fire support for the army was innovative, as was the sustained use
85 Donald M. Weller, "Firepower and the Amphibious Assault," Marine Corps Gazette 36 (March 1952):57-58 (hereafter cited as Weller, "Amphibious Assault").
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of call fire itself in ground operations. Unloading of men and equip
ment proceeded rapidly with the aid of the new amphibious craft,
DUKWs, and pontoon causeways, although there were many problems with
clearing the beaches. Hall later received the Legion of Merit for his
part in Operation Husky.
In a wider sense. Hall, and other assault force commanders,
successfully demonstrated that Europe, like North Africa, could be
invaded from the sea. Building on the momentum of the expulsion of the
Axis from North Africa, the Allied conquest of Sicily ensured sea and
air control of the central Mediterranean, and with this control the
entire southern coast of Europe became vulnerable to attack.The
fall of Sicily contributed to the surrender of Italy in September 1943,
and thus the Allies scored a psychological victory by knocking one Axis
partner out of the war. Not originally conceived as providing a spring
board for the invasion of the Italian mainland, Sicily did, in fact,
become an outpost for subsequent assaults on Italy. Once again, the
Allies had planned, prepared, and executed a massive joint and combined
British historians Donald Macintyre, The Naval War Against Hitler (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), p. 287, and Pack, Operation "Husky," p. 172, agree that the Sicilian success showed the value of sea power in attacking a weak point on the enemy's perimeter. Cf., Hanson W. Baldwin, Battles Lost and Won: Great Campaigns of World War II (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1966), p. 225 (hereafter cited as Baldwin, Battles Lost and Won), and Martin Blumenson, Sicily: Whose Victory? (New York: Ballentine Books, 1969), p. 156, who maintain that the Germans won a great moral victory by fighting a delaying action and withdrawing the bulk of their troops across the Straits of Messina.
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operation, and in doing so strengthened the coalition effort to roll
back Axis conquests.
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OPERATION AVALANCHE: SALERNO
Background
Weeks before the Sicilian invasion took place, Allied planners
pondered the location of the next offensive action after Operation
Husky. It became apparent during the spring of 1943 that Anglo-
American resources would not be sufficient to launch a large cross
channel attack that year; but it would be unwise to leave Allied forces,
seasoned by the North African and Sicilian campaigns, idle until 1944.
While American strategists leaned toward the conquest of Sardinia and
Corsica and then an assault on southern France, the British argued for
a possible invasion of the toe and heel of Italy, Both Allies concurred
about the merits of forcing Italy to surrender and of tying down
German troops but could not agree on the means.^
To solve the dilemma, Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Combined
Chiefs of Staff met in Washington at the Trident Conference from 12 to
25 May and debated once again the cross-channel versus the peripheral
^Martin Blumenson, Salerno to Cassino, in United States Army in World War II: The Mediterranean Theater of Operations (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1969), pp. 4-8 (hereafter cited as Blumenson, Salerno).
129
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Mediterranean approach. The British accepted a definite date, 1 May
1944, for the cross-channel invasion and agreed to a four-stage com
bined bomber offensive against Germany. For its part, the United
States went along with the idea of more Mediterranean operations to
get Italy out of the war, if such moves could be made without increasing
Allied forces there. Reaching no decision on the site of the next
Mediterranean campaign, the Combined Chiefs shifted the choice to 2 Eisenhower.
During the summer, Eisenhower's planners juggled alternatives
and briefly considered a bold assault on Naples but ruled this out
because that port city was too far away for Sicilian-based fighter
planes to furnish air cover. On 20 July the Combined Chiefs of Staff
approved a request from Eisenhower that the next step be an assault
against the mainland, eliminating the possibility of incursions against
Sardinia and Corsica. News of the replacement of Benito Mussolini by
Pietro Badoglio on 25 July made the possibility of an Italian surrender
more imminent. Eisenhower continued to weigh various possible assault
sites and on 16 August decided on a two-pronged attack: the British
Eighth Army, in "Operation Baytown," would cross the Straits of Messina
from Sicily as soon as possible, and combined forces would launch
"Operation Avalanche" in the Bay of Salerno on 9 September. The ulti
mate objective of the Salerno assault would be the occupation of
^Matloff, Strategic Planning: 1943-1944, pp. 126-34; Stoler, Politics of the Second Front, pp. 94-95.
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Naples. Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff,
meeting in Quebec at the Quadrant Conference from 14 to 24 August,
gave Eisenhower’s plans their nod of approval.
The command structure for Operation Avalanche remained the same
as for Operation Husky. Under Eisenhower were British commanders
Cunningham for the navy, Alexander for the ground forces, and Tedder
for air support. Hewitt's Western Naval Task Force would land
Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark's two-corps Fifth Army on a twenty-
five mile stretch of beach in the Gulf of Salerno and then would
support that army as it advanced to capture Naples and adjacent air
fields. Hewitt's combined naval force was divided in two: Commodore
G. N. Oliver, RN, would command the Northern Attack Force lifting
Lieutenant General Sir Richard M. McCreery's Tenth Corps; Admiral Hall
would lead the Southern Attack Force embarking Major General Ernest J.
Dawley's Sixth Corps. The U.S. Twelfth Air Support Command would
provide air cover, while a British support carrier force augmented
fighter protection.^
Preparation
Meanwhile, Hall's amphibious command continued its duties of
joint training, in the Arzew area, for the next invasion. With his
3 Blumenson, Salerno, pp. 14-15, 17, 19-24. 4 Morison, Sicily— Salerno--Anzio, pp. 246-47; Commander Eighth Fleet, Operation Plan 7-43, serial 00494 of 14 August 1943, JLH Papers.
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shore headquarters now at Mostaganem, Hall reorganized and further
expanded his force. Through another administrative change, in mid-
August the Amphibious Force, Northwest African Waters, became the
Eighth Amphibious Force.^ On Hall's staff Captain E. H. von Heimburg
replaced Captain Mays Lewis as chief of staff; Commander Marion N.
Little moved up to operations officer; Lieutenant Commander William R.
Caruthers continued as communications officer; and Lieutenant Commander
Victor Boatwright remained as gunnery officer. By this time Hall had
five army officers attached to his staff, but these men served
primarily as advisory rather than as active decision-making members
of the staff.^
In an effort to consolidate all amphibious training under naval
command, Hewitt had recommended to Eisenhower in June that the com
mander of the amphibious force be in charge of the army invasion
training center at Arzew.^ Although Eisenhower rejected this request,
he did authorize the establishment of a separate amphibious training
center. A directive of 30 July from Eisenhower clearly defined
responsibilities for amphibious and related training in the northwest
African area. The navy would provide training for the landing of
^1 and 15 August 1943, War Diary, Amphibious Force.
^Roster of Officers, U.S. Amphibious Force, Northwest African Waters, 1 August 1943, in Orders and Travel, 7 January 1942-27 December 1945 file, JLH Papers.
^Hewitt to Eisenhower, serial 00306 of 13 June 1943, Training file, ibid.
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assault and follow-up troops, for ship-to-shore communications, and for
moving supplies from ships to beach dumps. In addition, the amphibious
force would instruct the army in embarkation and debarkation techniques
and in the removal of underwater and beach obstacles. This same
directive charged the army with operating its invasion training center g primarily for non-amphibious instruction.
Although the Eisenhower directive also ordered the navy to
conduct joint schools for amphibious training, such schools were
already operating in Hall's command. By the end of July these diversi
fied schools provided basic indoctrination for commanders and their
staffs, taught scouts and raiders the techniques of beach identifica
tion and of secret night landings, and trained men to maintain and
operate the DUKWs. Both the communications and gunfire schools had
expanded the scope and intensity of their training. Additional
instruction was offered for staffs and troops in amphibious tactics
and movements, for transport quartermasters in the combat loading of
ships, and for demolition units. Classes at the schools ranged from
four days to four weeks, depending on the subject matter.^
Although the navy had been slowly taking over the training
programs after the establishment of Hall's amphibious force, Eisen
hower's directive provided a clear division of responsibilities between
O Hewitt to JLH, serial 00500 of 12 August 1943, enclosing Brig. Gen. T. J. Davis to Hewitt, 30 July 1943, Training file, ibid.
9 Ibid.
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the army and navy in the training for amphibious warfare. But, in
effect, the order sanctioned a fait accompli. The navy never set up
a separate amphibious training center, and the schools and programs
had already been established. Brigadier General John W. O'Daniel
continued his efficient command of the invasion training center at
Arzew, and he was always most cooperative with the navy. With the
official directive, however. Hall's command now had control and
supervision of all training of both army and navy amphibious forces
for use in the Mediterranean.^^
Not only were the American soldiers and sailors who were
preparing for the Italian operation instructed in landing techniques,
but Hall's force provided the facilities for training several French
divisions, should the task force commanders decide to use them in
Italy. In addition, the amphibious force gave instruction to replace
ment army officers awaiting new assignments.^^ The force utilized
both army and naval instructors, and Hall eventually requested the
permanent assignment of army officers to the joint amphibious schools
12 as the best means of executing policies and training programs.
All of this expansion and refinement of schooling for partici
pants in amphibious operations took place during the summer and fall
^^JLH interview, 1 March 1977.
^^Hewitt to JLH, 23 August 1943, Training file, JLH Papers.
12 JLH to Hewitt, serial 00303 of 21 October 1943, ibid.
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of 1943 while the Allies completed the Sicilian campaign and prepared
for and executed an assault on the Italian mainland. Since the possi
ble Salerno site was not definitely chosen until mid-August, Hall's
staff could only plan the next operation in a general way. As
Eisenhower continued to vacillate among nearly a dozen alternative
landing spots in early August, Hall was appointed a task force commander
for operation "Barracuda," a proposed direct assault on Naples, The
13 plan was canceled on the tenth.
After Eisenhower finally made the decision for Avalanche, only
a few weeks remained to prepare for the invasion. Hall's planners
worked closely with the staff of Major General Fred L. Walker, whose
Thirty-sixth Division the Southern Attack Force would initially put
ashore. The Thirty-sixth Infantry, a Texas National Guard division,
was part of the Sixth Corps, under the command of General Dawley.
Since Walker's and Hall's staffs were located in the Arzew-Mostaganem
area, they were able to hold frequent joint conferences throughout
14 the planning and training stages.
In the short time available to work out the complicated
details of Avalanche, Hall's staff, especially Commander Little,
13 4, 10 August 1943, War Diary, Amphibious Force.
^^Commander, Task Force 81, Report on Operation "Avalanche," Comments and Recommendations, p. 2, serial 00267 of 17 October 1943, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Hall's Action Report); Commander, U.S. Eighth Fleet, Action Report of the Salerno Landing, September-
October 1943, p. 6 8 , serial 0010 of 11 January 1945, OA, NHD (here after cited as Hewitt's Action Report).
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hammered out the assault plans as quickly as possible, but the many
changes in army requirements and the uncertainty about the number and
type of vessels to be used caused the staff much distress. Sometimes
Hall received information about changes in the naval force through
the army instead of through proper naval channels— another example of
command problems.Hall always found General Walker and his staff
cooperative in planning sessions.There were, of course, conferences
between the army and navy commanders. At one of these meetings Hall
heard about a merchant ship slated to carry a field hospital with
female nurses in the convoy. Hall immediately dropped the ship out of
the attack force— the ladies could come later when the beachhead was
. 17 secured.
Conferences continued, and on 20 August Generals Clark, Dawley,
and Walker met with Hall at Port aux Poules. On the twenty-fourth,
Clark changed H-Hour by thirty minutes, thus throwing planning into
even more disarray. The next day General Alexander and his deputy
chief of staff. Brigadier General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, USA, came on
board the Samuel Chase for discussions. On the thirty-first Hewitt
and three members of his staff arrived to talk about additional changes
in the planning, and that same day they attended a conference at Fifth
^Hall's Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, pp. 1-2.
^^JLH interview, 1 March 1977.
^^JLH Oral History, p. 141.
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Army headquarters,^® Eisenhower, as well as the top army commanders
for Avalanche spoke briefly, and Hall gave a short talk about his part
in the Salerno plans.
Hall had not been able to get his own operation order completed
until 30 August, and then there were constant changes even as the
assault force approached Salerno Bay. He did not know until D-minus-
20 one-day the total number of landing craft in his task force. Hall
also felt that Clark, in contrast to Allen in the Sicily operation and
Patton in the North African invasion, was reluctant to place his army
under naval command during the time the forces were at sea and before
the commanding general was established ashore. Perhaps this attitude
prevented his subordinate commanders from grasping the magnitude of
21 naval problems and responsibilities in amphibious warfare.
Air planning for the assault was better than the Husky invasion,
although air force officers still did not participate in the joint
planning sessions. The Northwest African Air Forces, supplemented by
18 20, 25, 31 August 1943, War Diary, Amphibious Force. The constant changes in army plans can be found in Hewitt's office files. See folder 503, box 4549, Commander Naval Forces, Northwest African Waters, Navy Flag Files, Record Group 313, National Records Center, Suitland, Md. (records from this collection hereafter cited as RG 313, NRG).
19 Schedule for conference, 5th Army Headquarters, 31 August 1943, Miscellaneous file, JLH Papers; Maj . Gen. A. M. Gruenther to JLH, 30 August 1943, Correspondence: 1943 file, JLH Papers.
20 Hall's Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, p. 2. 21 JLH interview, 4 March 1977.
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planes from five British aircraft carriers, would provide anti
submarine and fighter protection. Major General E. J. House, USAAF,
would be in Hewitt’s flagship to control aircraft in the assault area,
but House would not be able to order additional planes for direct,
22 close support of the troops.
As in Sicily, General Matthew Ridgeway's Eighty-second Airborne
Division was supposed to drop before the actual assault to block the
bridges across the Volturno River, north of Naples, and thereby prevent
reinforcement of Salerno. The top echelons canceled this plan on
3 September and shifted their thinking to a proposed drop at Rome.
D-Day, again chosen with the required amount of moonlight for para
troopers, could not be shifted, although it would have been to the
23 navy's advantage to have made its assault approach in total darkness.
Repeating its Husky decision, the army rejected the use of
naval gunfire support prior to H-Hour. Such pre-landing bombardment
might have knocked out some defenses along the beaches but would have
destroyed any element of surprise and would have alerted the enemy for
many miles around the exact landing site. Since nighttime bombardment
without illumination is not nearly as effective as daytime gunfire.
^^H. Kent Hewitt, "The Allied Navies at Salerno: Operation Avalanche— September, 1943," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 79 (September 1953):964 (hereafter cited as Hewitt, "Salerno"). See Craven and Cate, Torch to Pointblank, pp. 496-500, for duties of the Northwest African Air Forces during the attack.
23 Blumenson, Salerno, pp. 44-45.
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Hall did not feel, as Hewitt did, that the army and navy should abolish
the "outmoded concept" of surprise in favor of a general pre-landing
attempt to neutralize the beaches.His thinking on this subject had
changed since Sicily, where he believed that pre-assault bombardment
would have reduced casualties on the beaches.
During the planning stage, intensive amphibious training of
officers and men of the inexperienced Thirty-sixth Infantry, ran from
2 to 16 August in the Oran-Arzew area. Simultaneously, the troops
received instruction at the joint amphibious schools for forty days
before sailing. Generally, the amphibious training went fairly
smoothly, owing in large measure to the close proximity of the troops
25 to the training area.
As the final step in amphibious training Hall's force held a
joint rehearsal, "Operation Cowpuncher," on the night of 27-28 August
in the vicinity of Arzew and Mostaganem. Unfortunately, a large
portion of Hall's ships was absent on other duties. Lacking were
three LSIs (Landing Ship, Infantry), one LCS, one LSG (Landing Ship,
Gantry), all the LSTs and many LCIs, two divisions of screening
destroyers, three patrol craft, and eighteen of the twenty sweepers.
With so many ships and craft not participating, the rehearsal, essential
24 Hall's Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, pp. 17-18. Cf., Hewitt's Action Report, p. 130; and History of the Eighth Fleet, pp. 32, 35.
25 Hewitt's Action Report, p. 92; History of the Eighth Fleet, p. 31; "Administrative History: Naval Forces, Northwest African Waters," 1:28.
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for a carefully planned amphibious operation, lacked realism and its
value was reduced. Since enemy submarines posed a constant threat to
the transports, the force made only a token unloading of materiel.
Unloading is always the biggest problem in amphibious warfare, so the
haste in Operation Cowpuncher prevented a thorough joint practice of
26 this troublesome aspect of the assault.
In addition to Admirals Hall and Hewitt, Generals Clark,
Dawley, Walker and his deputy, Otto F. Lange, watched the rehearsal
from the Samuel Chase. Afterwards, they met to evaluate the practice
landing and sympathized with Hall's problems regarding the inadequate
number of ships and craft participating in the operation. At least
no one questioned the navy's ability to land the assault force at the
correct beaches at the proper time! Because the Forty-fifth Division,
a part of the Sixth Corps, would not go in the initial landing force
but would be brought in later. Hall asked Clark what role Dawley had
in the Salerno attack. Clark replied that Dawley, although he would
accompany the landing force, had no command until the Forty-fifth
27 arrived and the corps was activated.
Several days after the rehearsal. Captain Edgar, Hall's com
mander of transports, wrote in amusement that one army officer's
criticism of boat waves circling in opposite directions (standard
26 Hall's Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, pp. 5-6; History of the Eighth Fleet, p. 31; "Administrative History: Naval Force, Northwest African Waters," 1:28
^^JLH interview, 1 March 1977.
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operating procedure) during the approach showed him to be like an early
Roman caught in modern Fifth Avenue traffic: he did not recognize
organized chaos when he saw it.^®
Soon after the rehearsal, the transports, already partially
loaded for the Salerno assault, returned to Mers-el-Kebir to complete
taking on stores. In the field of combat loading, the navy’s theory
that supplies on transports should be kept to the bare miminum required
for the initial assault clashed with the army’s more expansive belief
that much materiel that could easily be brought in subsequent convoys
should be dumped on board the attack force vessels. Hall's command
had numerous difficulties during loading because ill-trained army
personnel assigned to this task often attempted to circumvent naval
regulations by trying to load the men-of-war as though they were
merchant vessels instead of following amphibious combat loading
techniques. In other cases the army tried to carry on board gasoline
in covered vehicles and to sneak explosives into forbidden holds. In
one episode the Army Air Forces, shopping for space for 250 and 500-
pound bombs, got an order from Eisenhower's headquarters to carry the
bombs in the assault force. When Hall refused to allow them to be
loaded. General Clark called him in protest, and then Hewitt phoned and
asked why Hall was not carrying out Eisenhower's orders. Since a poor
telephone connection precluded a long discussion. Hall succeeded in
28 Capt. C. D. Edgar to JLH, 2 September 1943, Correspondence : 1943 file, JLH Papers.
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getting Hewitt's permission to rely on his own judgment about carrying
the big bombs during the attack. Such a foolish plan could have caused
a small-scale Gallipoli, It would be ten days after the initial
landings before an airfield would be captured and made ready for
American planes, so there was ample time to send the bombs in follow-up
29 convoys. The many last-minute changes in army plans were reflected
in the army's trying to get even more stores, such as 150 tons of wire
and 35 tons of signal corps equipment, on the transports after they
30 were loaded and secured for sea.
As in Operation Husky, the failure of the army to grasp even
the rudiments of combat loading of assault ships caused unnecessary
delays and hard feelings. Hall's force had trained army transport
quartermasters in an amphibious school, but Eisenhower ordered these
men to duty under the Services of Supply, which knew nothing about
combat loading. A trained transport quartermaster should have been
assigned to each transport and assisted in the preparation and execu-
31 tion of loading plans. So far, amphibious operations in the
Mediterranean demonstrated that both the army and the air force had
little understanding of the purposes of combat-loaded transports.
29 Hall's Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, pp. 14-16; JLH Oral History, pp. 141-42; History of the Eighth Fleet, pp. 33-34; Claget, "Hewitt," p. 436.
30 Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 94-95.
31 Hall's Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, pp. 15-16; Hewitt, "Salerno," p. 964.
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As the hurried weeks of preparation ended, the top leaders of
the combined and joint expedition against Salerno had again organized
and readied their forces without great differences. On Hewitt's level,
he, Clark, and House eliminated some of the problems that had irked
joint planners before Sicily. Hindering the planning process, however,
were the distances between these men and their forces, uncertainty
about the availability of men and shipping, and the short time between
32 the Sicilian and Salerno campaigns.
Hall again had the dual role of handling the joint amphibious
training and of preparing to command an assault force. As commander of
the Eighth Amphibious Force, he had presided over the expansion and
refinement of army-navy amphibious training. As commander of the
Southern Attack Force, Hall worked with Walker without difficulty in
the planning phases, although changing army requirements complicated
the process. The most heated inter-service disputes revolved around
the combat loading of the transports, and in these incidences Hall
stood firmly behind the navy's theories of loading.
The Attack
Before the Allied assault on Salerno began, the Northwest
African Air Force had steadily and systematically bombed cities, mar
shalling yards, harbors, bridges, and airfields in central and
^^"Administrative History: Naval Forces, Northwest African Waters," 1:27; Hewitt, "Salerno," p. 961.
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33 southern Italy. On 3 September the British Eighth Army crossed the
Straits of Messina to Calabria. Virtually unopposed, the army began
its slow march over rugged terrain toward Salerno. On 9 September,
another quick operation putting part of the British First Airborne
Division at the port of Taranto s u c c e e d e d . The two operations had
taken some landing craft and cruisers slated for Hall’s force, and he
did not know which of these vessels would be available for Salerno.
As these attacks progressed, more than 600 ships and landing
craft of the Western Naval Task Force began sailing from Tripoli,
Bizerte, Oran, and Algiers toward a 25-mile stretch of beach in the
Gulf of Salerno. Hall's attack force lifted Walker's Thirty-sixth
Division and attached troops of the Sixth Corps, to be put ashore south
of the Sele River. Commodore Oliver's attack force, embarking General
McCreery's Tenth Corps, headed toward the beaches a few miles south of
Salerno and north of the Sele River. While Hall carried Walker and
his staff on board the Samuel Chase, Hewitt had Clark and his staff in
the force flagship. Ancon. Dawley, slated to be commander of the
Sixth Corps when it became activated, traveled with his staff on board
the Frederick Funston. Two small diversionary forces— one for the
Bay of Naples, the other for the Gulf of Gaeta— sailed toward their
33 Craven and Cate, Torch to Pointblank, pp. 503-12, describe the bombings.
34 Blumenson, Salerno, pp. 51-54; Morison, Sicily— Salerno— Anzio, pp. 233-36.
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35 destinations.
All ships of Hall's force rendezvoused off Palermo on 8 Septem
ber at sunset and proceeded to the assault area. The weather remained
clear, the sea calm— in contrast to the storms before the Torch and
Husky landings— throughout the entire operation. Although the moon,
in its second quarter, shone brightly, inexplicably there was no enemy
air or submarine attack against the assault force during the approach
36 p h ase .
As Hall neared Salerno, a startling radio announcement caused
him great concern. Unknown to many of the military commanders,®^ on
3 September the Allies had reached a secret armistice with Badoglio's
Italian government. Eisenhower, feeling that he should announce the
armistice before Allied troops landed in Italy, chose 1815 on the
evening of 8 September for the broadcast. Consequently, the combat
forces expected an unopposed landing; many officers and men, with an
air of euphoria, left their small arms ammunition and grenades on the
transports and landing craft. They yapped excitedly like ladies at a
tea party. With General Walker's concurrence. Hall sent a signal to
the force warning it that an Italian surrender would mean that the
®®Blumenson, Salerno, pp. 53-54; Morison, Sicily— Salerno— Anzio, pp. 251-52. ------
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 3, 7; Comments and Recommendations, pp. 6-7.
37 In his Oral History, 2:331, Hewitt states that he and his chief of staff were the only ones in his command who knew of the negotiations.
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troops could expect tough German opposition on shore, and, indeed, the
Germans had replaced the Italians in the beach areas. The unfortunate
timing of the radio announcement and the resulting lessening of
tension among the troops may have caused the resistance on the beaches
to be doubly effective. Few among the landing force anticipated the
38 well-prepared and blistering fire that greeted them. Hall felt that
the negotiations preceding the armistice, the obvious German knowledge
of them, and Eisenhower's handling of the whole affair played havoc 3q with the Salerno operation.
During the approach Commander A. H. Richards' sweepers had
followed the scout boats into the assault area and had begun a
systematic sweep of channels in the heavily mined waters. Hall had
learned two weeks earlier of the existence of the enemy minefields and
had time to lay out another transport area seaward. Sweeping actions
continued throughout D-Day, clearing fire support and inshore trans
port areas. The necessity of a thorough sweeping operation meant that
the transports had to anchor some eight to ten miles off shore, thus
giving the landing craft a longer run, and that the fire support
ships were not able to take station until late morning on D-Day.
38 Hall’s Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, pp. 30-31; Hewitt's Action Report, p. 91; JLH Oral History, pp. 146-48.
39 In an interview, 4 March 1977, Hall referred to the episode as a "Damn fool performance all around." Hugh Pond, Salerno (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1961), p. 20, calls Eisenhower's announcement a "psychological disaster of the first order" (hereafter cited as Pond, Salerno).
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The sweeping operation demonstrated the importance of an adequate
number of YMSs (motor mine sweepers) and the faster AMs (mine sweepers)
40 in any attack against a well-defended shore.
The vessels of Hall’s force slid quietly into position on
schedule shortly before midnight. In the distance the admiral could
see bright gunfire flashes and flares on the shore north of the Sele
River, in the vicinity of the assault area of the Northern Attack
Force. His force was ready to unload the Thirty-sixth Infantry
Division and to support it during its initial objectives of seizing
the railroad behind the beaches near Paestum and of making contact
with the British Tenth Corps as it extended the bridgehead to the
Alento-Calcre Rivers.
Fortunately, the physical characteristics of the beaches did
not present problems like those at Sicily. Better gradients would
make it easier for landing craft and boats to beach, although a bar
about 1 2 0 yards offshore would again necessitate the use of pontoon
causeways for unloading. Landing boats, LCTs, and LCIs would have no
problems; some LSTs would be able to come closer to the beach after
reconnaissance chose suitable spots,
The transports quickly debarked the troops, and boat waves
^^Hall’s Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, pp. 27-28.
^^Hall’s Action Report, p. 3.
^^Southern Attack Force, Operation Order No. K-43, serial 00200 of 30 August 1943, JLH Papers; Potter and Nimitz, Sea Power, p. 595.
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formed expeditiously and followed the PCs (patrol craft), which acted
as controls, and the YMSs toward shore. The first wave landed on all
beaches at or within minutes of H-Hour (0330) on 9 September and was
immediately met by machine gun, artillery— including anti-aircraft
guns fired horizontally-^and mortar fire. In addition, the Axis had
laid Teller mines over an area 100 yards deep on the beaches, which
also had barbed wire impediments.^^ By 0600 two assault regiments
(141st and 142nd Regimental Combat Teams) and General Walker had
landed amid increasingly stiff German resistance, including an early
morning bombing attack, Tanks, poised at the edge of freshly cut fire
lanes, kept the beaches under withering fire. Because of the uncleared
mine fields, the fire support ships were not able to assist the assault
forces for several more hours. The 143rd Reserve Regiment began
landing at 0630, while DUKWs brought in army field artillery. Further
curtailing American firepower was the late arrival of six LCT(5)s
loaded with tanks. Because of a series of mix-ups, including lack of
clear leadership by the commander of the LCT unit and his tactical
mistake of running parallel to the beaches, the tanks did not reach
shore until around 1 2 0 0 , ^ 4
4^Smith, "Amphibious Tactics," MCG 31 (March 1947):34,
^^Hall's Action Report, p, 3; Commander, Eighth Amphibious Force, Action Reports of Task Unit 81.3.6 and LCT(5)s 15, 195, 219, 244, 277,
and 364, with Hall's comments, serial 0050P of 8 December 1943, OA, NHD; Action Report', U.S.S.' Samuel C h ase , p. 2, no serial, 13 September 1943, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Samuel Chase Action Report); AFHQ in North Africa to War Dept., Dispatch, 9 September 1943, CNO Double Zero Files, box 53, OA, NHD.
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Although German planes bombed and strafed the beaches, they did
little damage to the naval force at anchor, partly because of the
effective use of smoke to obscure the transport area. For the first
time the Germans used remote controlled bombs— controlled rocket
gliders, radio controlled bombs, and rocket propelled bombs. Air cover
by Allied planes proved far better than at S i c i l y . Fighter planes
from the Northwest African Tactical Air Force, augmented by aircraft
from the British carrier force, effectively defended the beaches and
ships from enemy air attacks. Hall's own anti-aircraft defense teams,
intensely drilled in aircraft recognition at the amphibious training
schools after the Husky operation, performed in a highly disciplined
manner. Although the air force had sent General House to serve as
fighter director on board the Ancon, neither Hewitt nor Hall had
fighter planes under his command to respond to immediate requests for
46 air support. The navy still had not been able to gain acceptance of
the concept that all parts of the assault force should be under direct
naval command until the army was firmly established ashore.
While the fighter planes protected the ships. Hall ordered the
fire support vessels into their assigned positions during the forenoon
of D-Day, after the sweepers had cleared the minefields. Problems
4^Cf., Conolly, Oral History, p. 180, who says that air cover was scant for the entire operation.
4^Hall's Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, pp. 20-21; Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 169, 198-99, 250-51. Craven and Cate, Torch to Pointblank, p. 521, describe the air cover as a "protective canopy."
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other than mines had plagued the destroyers and cruisers. The cruiser
Boise, withdrawn from Hall’s force on 8 September and sent to Taranto,
had been part of the four fire support groups, and her removal
necessitated changes in the fire support plans. These changes, con
veyed by visual signals, did not reach two destroyers. The surrender
of the Italian government and its armed forces caused more complica
tions by restricting the range and severity of the gunfire to be
delivered against non-German targets. Communications with shore fire
control parties had not been solidly established and were often dis
rupted by enemy action, so much gunfire was unobserved or not reported.
Command problems again surfaced in the confusion of battle, and Hall's
force often received requests for gunfire support from unauthorized
... 47 army officers.
By late in the morning of D-Day, the cruisers Philadelphia and
Savannah and the destroyer Bristol fired against batteries, tanks,
troops, observation posts, towns, roads, and bridges,All through
the afternoon, the destroyers Woolsey, Edison, and Ludlow, assisted
by the Dutch gunboat Flores and the monitor H.M.S. Abercrombie,
joined the cruisers in delivering gunfire support. The most successful
was the Edison, closing the beaches to 3,000 yards and destroying
^^Hall's Action Report, p. 11; Comments and Recommendations, pp. 16-19.
48 Action Reports, U.S.S. Savannah, serial 006 of 26 September 1943, and U.S.S. Philadelphia, serial 070 of 25 September 1943, OA, NHD.
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twelve tanks.49 Even the LCIs joined the LCSs in contributing sup
porting machine gun fire.^® Cruiser planes, army P-51s, and British
grasshopper planes assisted in spotting the ships' fire.
The next morning, with the problems of communication with
shore fire control parties solved, the naval gunfire support unit
quickly and accurately delivered counterbattery, interdiction, and
neutralizing fire. Although Hall did not believe that gunfire support
was as effective as it had been in Sicily, General Lange, the assistant
division commander of the Thirty-sixth who also commanded the
artillery, thought otherwise: "Thank God for the fire of the blue
belly Navy Ships. Probably could not have stuck out blue and
yellow beaches [without them]. Brave fellows, these. Tell them so."^l
The navy had come a long way in gunfire support techniques since the
lobbing of duds at Casablanca.
As naval guns assisted in the intense battle ashore, the
unloading of the transports of troops and materiel proceeded speedily.
The LCV(P)s and LCMs shuttled artillery, tanks, motorized equipment.
49 Action Reports, U.S.S. Woolsey, serial 0121 of 12 September 1943; U.S.S. Edison, serial 021 of 11 September 1943; and U.S.S. Ludlow, serial 0554 of 12 September 1943, OA, NHD.
50 Smith, "Amphibious Tactics," MCG 31 (March 1947):38, stated that the improvised use of LCIs and other small craft for inshore fire support was the most memorable feature of naval gunfire at Sale rn o.
^^Hall's Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, pp. 16, 17, 19. Lange's message of 10 September in Ludlow Action Report, enclosure G.
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ammunition, and other stores to the beaches. The Northern Attack
Force sent sixteen LCTs during the afternoon of D^Day and eleven more
the next morning to augment Hall's assault force, and all ships
except one transport had unloaded by 2200 on 10 September. By using
rail loading techniques (loading landing boats while they were still
on board the larger ships and then lowering the filled boats into the
water), which were faster than net loading, the force got supplies to
the beaches more quickly than in the Husky operation. Ifhen sweeping
operations had cleared the waters closer to the shore. Hall ordered
the transports to move into the inner anchorage at 1800 on D-Day,
thereby making a shorter run for the landing craft. The hard-working
boat crews showed far better discipline than at Sicily, and there were
CO no reports of the abandonment of boats on the beaches. By the
evening of 10 September, Hall had landed 38,179 troops, 3,204 vehicles,
CO and 6,911 tons of cargo over the open beaches,
Only two months had passed since the Sicily invasion, so
there had been no opportunity to implement the suggestions that Hall
had made about the various landing craft, Many of them had continued
to ferry men and materiel in the continuing Sicilian campaign and
others had been used for amphibious training, so there had been little
time for necessary overhauls, much less major modifications. The
^^Hall's Action Report, pp, 3, 12; Comments and Recommendations, pp. 8-9.
^^Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 161, 163.
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LSTs, laden with bulk stores and equipment as well as the 157th and
179th Regimental Combat Teams of the floating reserve, had to be
unloaded over pontoons as at Sicily. Although the LSTs unloaded onto
the beaches in the northern attack area, beach gradients in the
southern attack area prevented the direct unloading onto the shore,
even over the seventy-nine-foot ramps. The LCTs, so effective in
unloading the larger LSTs in Husky, were all used to unload transports
and were unable to handle the LSTs' loads.
The LCI(L)s again proved their versatility. After discharging
the troops they had brought shore-to-shore, the craft carried soldiers
from other transport vessels to the beaches. Hall's force had
experimented with the LCI(L)s during the training period before
Avalanche and had found them valuable as patrol craft, salvage vessels,
and traffic control boats. Following the unplanned use of the craft
for close fire support. Hall recommended more armament, increased fire
power, and better navigational equipment so that the LCIs could be used
as support craft.
As in Husky, the LCT(5)s showed themselves to be the best
vessels for getting cargo, vehicles, and tanks from ship to shore.
Small enough to unload directly onto the beaches or in shallow water.
^^Hall's Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, pp. 22-23; Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 103-06, 111-12.
^^Hall's Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, pp. 10-11, 23-24; Ladd, Assault from the Sea, p. 221. Hewitt had earlier made a similar recommendation. See Hewitt's Action Report, p. 116.
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the LCTs ran continuously and enabled the force to get its transports
unloaded by the evening of 10 September.Close behind the LCTs in
ability to unload in ship-to-shore actions were the LCM(3)s. Designed
to carry medium tanks, the craft performed more satisfactorily in
handling bulk cargo. The LCV(P)s served well as troop carriers and
even handled cargo. These craft tended to swing broadside when
beached for a long period and would often fill with water through the
ramp, so Hall recommended making the bulkhead between the passenger
space and the engine compartment water tight to prevent flooding.
Although transport commanders criticized the LCS because of
its awkwardness and its inability to lift troops and cargo. Hall
thought the small craft, with some modifications, had a definite place
in amphibious assaults. During the early hours of the Salerno
landings, the LCSs' machine guns and rockets provided the sole support
for the attack forces and also served as scout boats and traffic
58 control boats.
As in Sicily, the potential of the DUKW— the two-and-one-half-
ton truck that could also perform as a boat— was not fully realized
during the unloading stage. After the DUKWs reached shore with their
initial loads, often 105 mm. howitzers, the army usually commandeered
^^Ladd, Assault from the Sea, p. 101.
^^Hall's Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, pp. 24-25; Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 113-14.
^®Hall's Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, p. 26; Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 114-15.
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59 them for shore transportation.
The landing craft unloaded the transports in an average time of
twenty-five to thirty-six hours, a marked improvement over the fifty-
five hours required in Husky. Better handling of the craft, the addi
tion of LCTs from Oliver's force, the good weather, the use of cargo
nets, and faster unloading on the beaches all contributed to the more
efficient unloading of men and supplies. Given enough LCTs and LCMs,
a task force commander could further reduce the unloading time of
transports to twenty-four to thirty hours.Although there had been
no substantial modifications in the landing craft and boats between the
Sicily and Salerno invasions, the vessels turned in a more effective
performance during the latter attack. Because of the increased
experience of boat crews and the better tactical deployment and utili
zation of the vessels, the newly developed landing craft continued
to brighten the prospects for future amphibious landings.
Salvage operations had not been difficult on the Salerno
beaches. Complementing the perfect weather and the lack of tide, the
good beach gradients kept landing craft disabilities to a minimum.
Only eleven craft had to be abandoned in the assault area, and ten of
these had been damaged or sunk by enemy action. Apprehensive of a
situation similar to Husky, Hall had added six bulldozers to the beach
59 Hall's Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, pp. 8-9; Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 110-11, 212; Ladd, Assault from the Sea, p. 147.
^*^Hall's Action Report, Comments and Recommendations, p. 8 .
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battalion, had increased the manpower in the beach platoons, and had
arranged to have an LCM(3) equipped for salvage work attached to each
transport.
In spite of the improved unloading skills, the excellent
performance by the landing craft, and the minor salvage problems, the
usual pileup on the beaches occurred by the night of D-Day. Hall had
used cargo nets to transfer equipment from the transports to the
LCV(P)s and then cranes or DUKWs to lift the nets from the landing
craft onto the beaches. These mechanical aids, plus the use of extra
men, increased the efficiency of unloading; but the army, apparently
lacking a clear plan for beach operations, had not provided enough men
or trucks in its shore party to move the supplies to inland dumps.
Toward the end of D-Day, Hall sent a dispatch to Hewitt asking that he
get Clark to provide necessary soldiers to expedite the clearing of
the beaches. Clark ordered Fifth Army headquarters troops to work as
labor units, thus alleviating the congestion on the beaches. Further
complicating the unloading procedures, army officers sometimes tried
to direct the boat traffic at the beaches and then clashed with the
naval beachmasters who were responsible for boat control. Such command
62 problems caused unnecessary confusion and friction.
Communications proved more troublesome in the Avalanche
^^Hall's Action Report, p. 11; Comments and Recommendations, pp. 12-13.
62 Ibid., pp. 11-13; Morison, Sicily^— Salerno— Anzio, p. 269; History of the Eighth Fleet, p. 36; Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 151-53.
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operation than at Sicily. Because of the rushed planning and prepara
tions for the Salerno attack, there was no time to install special
needed equipment on some of the LSTs and LCI(L)s, and several late-
arriving ships did not even receive the communications plan. Uncer
tainty about the plan caused these craft to clutter the radio
channels, asking for instructions. Overloaded circuitry on the Samuel
Chase led to delays and breakdowns in communications. In addition, on
D-Day the Chase had to take over the operation of the Ancon's faulty
TBS (talk between ships) system and conduct the aircraft warning
service. On shore, the savage fighting often caused the destruction
of communications equipment or the killing of operators, so there was
more difficulty in quickly establishing and maintaining reliable ship-
to-shore contact.
Hall's force not only provided landing craft and gunfire
support to aid the Fifth Army, it also enabled Clark to remove unwanted
combat leaders. To Hall's surprise, Major General Alfred M. Gruenther,
Clark's chief of staff, boarded the Samuel Chase on D-Day and said
that Clark wanted a boat to land General Dawley. Since the Sixth
Corps would not be activated until the beachhead was secure and the
remaining division of the corps— Major General Troy Middleton's Forty-
fifth Infantry— had landed, it seemed unusual to Hall that the corps
commander would be put ashore. Early on 10 September, Dawley's staff.
63 Hall's Action Report, p. 11; Comments and Recommendations, pp. 31-33. Hewitt's Action Report, pp. 217-19, rates communications as generally satisfactory.
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quartered in the Frederick Funstpn, transferred to shore headquarters.
Toward evening, Gruenther again came on board the flagship, saying
that Clark wanted a boat to take an officer from the Salerno beach
back to Sicily; he refused to identify the man. Hall complied and
assigned an LCI for the task. The skipper of the LCI soon radioed to
the Chase that the unidentified officer was Dawley— with his stars
torn from his shoulders and replaced by a colonel's eagles. The LCI
took Dawley to Sicily.
By dark on 10 September, the transports were completely
unloaded, and at 2215 the Samuel Chase led a convoy back to Oran.
Escorted by ten destroyers, the fifteen empty transports and assault
freighters sortied from Salerno Bay, and for a half hour German planes
directed a low-level bombing attack against the convoy. Hall was
reluctant to leave the assault area because he did not think the
army forces could be considered firmly established ashore; but, since
his force headquarters was in a transport (a prime target for enemy
aircraft), he had to leave Salerno Bay as rapidly as possible. He
felt that an attack force commander, because of his intimate knowledge
JLH interview, 4 March 1977. Army sources, e.g., Truscott, Command Missions, p. 258; Blumenson, Salerno, p. 152; and Mark W. Clark, Calculated Risk (New York; Harper & Brothers, 1950), p. 208, place the date of Dawley's relief as 20 September. The official army historical account of the Dawley episode, Blumenson, pp. 149-52, is largely based on a series of interviews with Clark, Alexander, Brig. Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer (Alexander's U.S. deputy), Marshall, and a letter from Walker; no official documentation is cited. Pond, Salerno, p. 267, agrees with the date of the 20th, but, p. 212, correctly states that Clark had decided to make a scapegoat of Dawley.
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of events surrounding the landings, was better equipped than a replace
ment to carry through to its conclusion the naval support of an amphib
ious operation. But he realized that neither transports nor fire
support vessels make satisfactory flagships, When Hall sailed. Rear
Admiral Richard L, Conolly, in the small seaplane tender Biscayne,
assumed command of the Southern Attack Force.
As Hall steamed out of the combat area, one of the screening
destroyers, the Rowan, chased two German E-boats that threatened the
convoy. After the Rowan changed course to rejoin the screen, one
E-boat slipped back and sent a torpedo into the destroyer. A loud
explosion rang out, and the Rowan quickly sank, taking down 202
officers and men. Following this loss, the rest of the convoy encoun
tered no further difficulties in its return to Oran and entered Mers-
el-Kebir harbor on the morning of 14 September
When Hall's convoy left Salerno, the Allied beachhead was by
no means secure. On D-Day, Walker's Thirty-sixth Division ran into
heavily fortified and mined beach defenses but captured the town of
Capaccio and the 459-foot hill, Templo San Paolo, although it fell
short of its initial objectives. On 10 September, German resistance
lessened, and the Forty-fifth Division landed to complete the Sixth
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 15-16; Comments and Recommendations,
pp. 2 1 - 2 2 .
^^Morison, Sicily— Salerno^— Anzio, pp. 298-99; Hall's Action Report, pp. 15-16; Hall to Hewitt, Dispatch, 12 September 1943, CNO Double Zero Files, Box 53.
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Corps. In the British sector, Oliver's attack force landed McCreery's
Tenth Corps, which encountered stiff opposition and also did not
succeed in taking its D-Day objectives of Salerno harbor, Montecorvino
airfield, and Battipaglia. The Tenth Corps made limited progress on
10 September.
By the next day, the German defenders had rushed some 600
tanks and mobile guns along the Sele River, and their determined
counter-attacks in both the northern and southern assault areas nearly
pushed the Fifth Army back into the sea. The situation appeared so
doubtful on 13 September that Clark even considered withdrawing either
the British Tenth Corps or the American Sixth Corps and regrouping them
to form a single force. He asked Hewitt to draw up the appropriate
naval plans.General Alexander arrived on the scene and apparently
convinced Clark that such a move was not feasible.Throughout this
uncertain time, the support rendered by the navy's guns, often within
a mile of the beaches, in repelling the German tank attacks was a
^^Morison, Sicily— Salerno— Anzio, pp. 270, 278, 280-81; Roskill, The Offensive: Part I , pp. 171-74.
^^Hewitt's Oral History, 2:342-44; Blumenson, Salerno, p. 116; Hewitt, "Salerno," p. 972.
^^Alexander had the firm support of Cunningham, Oliver, McCreery, and Hewitt in this decision. See Cunningham, Sailor's Odyssey, p. 570, and Pack, Cunningham, p. 267.
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crucial factor in maintaining the precarious position of the Allied
army.Air support, in the form of delivering paratrooper reinforce
ments and of bombing, helped preserve Clark's tenuous beachhead.By
20 September, after bitter fighting, the position of the Allies had
markedly improved. Clark, sustaining heavy casualities in the Thirty-
sixth Division, prepared to push on to the ultimate objective of the
72 Salerno landings: the capture of Naples. The port city fell into
Allied hands on 1 October, and British and American forces reached
the Volturno a week later.
With three amphibious assaults to his credit. Hall considered
Operation Avalanche a continuation of the amphibious tactics and
techniques developed during the Sicily campaign. Generally, the same
successes and errors appeared again, but this time there was no pre
invasion storm to create adverse landing conditions. Command problems
Hewitt, "Salerno," p. 976; Cunningham, Sailor's Odyssey, p. 572; McMillian, "Development of Naval Gunfire Support," p. 9. Pond, Salerno, p. viii, credits naval support with preventing another Dunkirk. Even the commander of the German Tenth Army, General S. von Vietinghoff, testified to the effectiveness of naval firepower: "The attack this morning [14 September] pushed on into stiffened resistance; but above all the advancing troops had to endure the most severe heavy fire that had yet been experienced-— the naval gunfire from at least 16 to 18 battleships, cruisers and large destroyers lying in the roadstead. With astonishing precision and freedom of maneuver these ships shot with very overwhelming effect at every target spotted." Quoted in B. H. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1971), p. 464 (hereafter cited as Hart, Second World War),
^^Craven and Cate, Torch to Pointblank, pp. 530-37.
72 Truscott, Command Missions, pp. 249-54.
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with the array arose in the planning, training, loading, and unloading
stages; and the Array Air Forces did not participate in the joint
planning sessions, although air cover and support improved markedly
in the Salerno campaign. Partly because of increased experience and
several mechanical aids to unloading, the landing craft and boat crews
turned in better performances. Establishing communications was more
of a problem than in Sicily, primarily because of the tougher enemy
resistance. Naval gunfire, less extensive in the early hours of the
assault than at Sicily, once again proved its value in turning back
enemy counterattacks. The success of the entire Western Naval Task
Force in getting the ground forces ashore and sustaining them during
heavy German resistance demonstrated, as it had before, the growing
development of the techniques of amphibious warfare.
Hall's role in the execution of Operation Avalanche rested on
his effective administration and expansion of the training facilities
of the Eighth Amphibious Force and on his leadership in commanding
the Southern Attack Force. He landed his assault waves on time and
on target, and, in spite of the heavily mined waters and beaches, sent
his fire support ships close to shore to deliver the naval gunfire
that permitted the Thirty-sixth Division to remain ashore in the face
of determined resistance. Unloading the transports went as planned
and more quickly than at Sicily. Since his flagship was a transport.
Hall, unfortunately, had to leave the Salerno area before the army had
secured its. beachhead. Later, Hall received a Gold Star in lieu of a
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second Legion of Merit for his success as a tactical commander in
Operation Avalanche.
After Hall returned to North Africa, he soon went to Algiers
for temporary additional duty as commander of the naval forces in
northwest African waters. As senior naval officer present. Hall
assumed administrative command of Hewitt's duties until the latter
returned from Salerno in early October.
To Hall's great relief, the problems stemming from inadequate
procedures of unloading landing craft on assault beaches drew a
response from the highest levels. Hewitt passed on to Hall a directive
from Admiral King which offered solutions— on paper, at least— to the
recurring pileupg on the beaches. In the future, officers of higher
rank would serve as beachmasters, and beach parties would remain
responsible for such nautical tasks as hydrography, boat control,
salvage and repair. In addition, the beach parties would supervise
the unloading of the landing craft of almost all cargo and would move
the cargo to prescribed beach dumps. The army shore parties would
then be responsible for transferring the supplies to inland dumps and
would also provide labor to unload the boats. Embarked troops would
furnish the labor force, which would be under the beachmaster's
command during unloading.
7 3 21 September, 4 October 1943, War Diary, Amphibious Force.
^^King to commanders in chief, Atlantic Fleet, Seventh Fleet, Eighth Fleet, serial 03395 of 1 October 1943, Amphibious Doctrine file, JLH Papers. For a brief description of the evolution of this
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In late October, Hall received orders to Britain as the com
mander of the Eleventh Amphibious Force. As he prepared to relinquish
his current command, he tried again to secure a permanent allotment
of army officers and men for the staffs of both amphibious forces. He
had made such a request to Eisenhower the previous March, with no
results. Now the admiral suggested a larger contingent from the army
for both staffs.
On 8 November, Rear Admiral Frank J. Lowry, who had replaced
Hall once before in the Moroccan sea frontier, became commander of the
Eighth Amphibious Force. Five days later. Hall bade farewell to
Hewitt, from whom he had learned so much about amphibious warfare,
and sailed in the Ancon for Britain.
More broadly, the invasion of mainland Italy at Salerno
revealed the vulnerability of continental Europe to the use of sea
power in the form of amphibious assaults, although the outcome of the
battle hung in doubt for many days. The slow march northward by
Allied armies eventually provided ports to supply those armies and
numerous airfields that enabled American and British planes to
organization, see D. W. Orahood, "Beachmasters— the Amphibious Traffic Cops," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 92 (September 1966): 140-43.
^^Hall to Hewitt, serial 00302 of 21 October 1943, Training file, JLH Papers,
^^ 8 , 13 November 1943, War Diary, Amphibious Force.
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intensify the aerial assault on southern Germany and Rumania.Opera
tion Avalanche, coming on the heels of Italy’s s u r r e n d e r , ^ 8 coincided
with the turning over of the Italian fleet to the Allies, thus
removing another potential hazard to Mediterranean shipping. An off
shoot of the invasion was the abandonment of Sardinia and Corsica by
the Germans. Possession of the two islands, subsequently occupied by
the French, further increased the safety of the Mediterranean for the
Allies and supplied additional airfields for strikes against northern
79 Italy and southern France, Following a combined strategy that
orv permitted continued peripheral jabs at the enemy, the Allied invasion
of Italy tied up German troops and contributed to the weakening of the
Nazi war effort. Again, the Allies and the armed services planned and
carried out a large combined and joint operation that, despite
misunderstandings, helped perfect the practice of coalition warfare.
^^Roskill, The Offensive: Part I, p. 182.
78 Pack, Cunningham, p , 272, states that the surrender demon strated the correctness of Britain's "soft underbelly" strategy.
^^Blumenson, Salerno, pp. 152-53, refers to Sardinia and Corsica as "a great prize won at slight cost."
80 British historian. Hart, Second World War, pp. 474-75, criticizes the location of the Allied landings as being overly cautious. Cf., Hewitt, "Salerno," p. 976, which refers to Avalanche as daring in concept.
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PREPARING FOR NORMANDY
Background
Allied strategists had debated the timing of the direct frontal
attack against Hitler's Europe since the early days of American
participation in the war. At the Trident Conference in May 1943, the
British accepted the target date of 1 May 1944 for an invasion of
France. Apprehensive that the British would advocate more resources
for the Mediterranean and thereby cause a postponement of the cross
channel assault (now called "Operation Overlord"), Marshall decided to
push for a definitive Allied position on European strategy. Meeting
at the Quadrant Conference in Quebec, 14-24 August, Marshall and
British General Brooke again discussed the merits of the peripheral
Mediterranean versus the direct cross-channel strategy. The Combined
Chiefs of Staff compromised; the Normandy invasion would be the
primary Allied effort in 1944, but Mediterranean operations would
continue, possibly calling for additional manpower and materiel.^
To settle the question of general strategy, Roosevelt,
Gordon A. Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, in United States Army in World War II; The European Theater of Operations (Washington, D.C,: Government Printing Office, 1951), pp. 94-95, 98-99 (hereafter cited as Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack); Matloff, Strategic Planning, pp. 162, 175, 211, 227-30.
166
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2 Churchill, and Stalin agreed to talks in Tehran in late November. En
route to the Big Three meeting, the American and British leaders and
their staffs met in Cairo (Sextant Conference) with China’s General
issimo Chiang Kai-shek from 22 to 26 November. Roosevelt promised
Chiang an amphibious operation in the Bay of Bengal ("Operation
Buccaneer"), but the forces needed for this assault would reduce the
O resources available for the European theater.
Moving on to Tehran (Eureka Conference, 28 November-2 December),
Roosevelt and Churchill listened as Stalin announced that the Soviet
Union would enter the war in the Pacific when Germany was beaten and
that Overlord was still the most satisfactory method of assaulting
Germany. Stalin rejected Churchill's plea for additional Mediter
ranean operations that would delay the cross-channel attack, if only
for a few months. The three leaders agreed on simultaneous offensives
from the east by the Russians and from the west by Operations Overlord
and "Anvil" (an amphibious assault on southern France) in May 1944.^
Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff returned
2 Richard M. Leighton, "Overlord versus the Mediterranean at the Cairo-Tehran Conferences (1943)," in Greenfield, Command Decisions, pp. 182-207, gave a thorough account of the conferences,
3 Matloff, Strategic Planning, pp. 347-56; Stoler, Politics of the Second Front, pp. 139-42; Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall; Organizer of Victory, 1943-1945 (New York; Viking Press, 1973), p. 308 (hereafter cited as Pogue, Organizer of Victory).
^Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 123-25; Roskill, The Offen sive; Part I, pp. 344-45. Stoler, Politics of the Second Front, pp. 135-54, has a good description of the arguments and final agree ments at Tehran.
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to Cairo to conclude the Sextant talks from 3 to 7 December. Con
fronted with the grim realities of an insufficient number of landing
craft to mount two invasions of France and one in the Bay of Bengal,
Roosevelt canceled Buccaneer in order to concentrate on European opera
tions, When the Allied leaders dispersed, they had finally agreed on
a firm schedule to win the war against Germany. Fixing the date for
Overlord at the expense of extended Mediterranean operations was the
final step in "closing the ring" around Axis-held Europe.^
The British had been slow in accepting a definite time for the
cross-channel attack, but they had led in early planning for some form
of assault in northwestern Europe. By the end of 1941, British planners
had sketched out the first Operation Roundup, designed as a mop-up
assault against an exhausted and losing Germany. In the spring of
1942, combined planners toyed with the prospect of staging Operation
Sledgehammer that year. Simultaneously, War Department planners drew
up an outline plan for a major cross-channel attack in 1943. Temporary
British enthusiasm for this expanded Operation Roundup launched
Operation Bolero, the buildup of a force of about one million American
troops in the United Kingdom.^ But by July 1942, Allied leaders had
^Richard M. Leighton, "Overlord Revisited: An Interpretation of American Strategy in the European War, 1942-1944," American Historical
Review 6 8 (July 1963):937.
^Stephen W. Roskill, The Offensive: Part II, 1st June 1944-14th August 1945 (London: HMSO, 1961), pp. 5-6 (hereafter cited as Roskill,
The Offensive; Part II); Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 6 - 8 , 12-13, 15-16, 19, 21.
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made the decision to invade North Africa, and the cross-channel inva
sion was postponed,
American and British planners did begin working in London in
the summer of 1942 on a general outline plan for Roundup, but it was
not until the Casablanca Conference the following January that the
Combined Chiefs of Staff suggested the establishment of a combined
staff that would plan for a Sledgehammer-type operation in 1943 and a
large invasion of Europe in 1944, To British Lieutenant General
Frederick E, Morgan, chief of staff to the Supreme Allied Commander
(COSSAC), fell the responsibility of planning the possible cross
channel attacks, Morgan's combined staff began meeting in April and
two months later had devised an outline plan that proposed initially
landing two British divisions and one American division near Caen,
followed by eight more divisions. Since no major ports would be
captured quickly, two artificial ports (Mulberries) would ease
supplying the troops across the beaches,^ A large meeting-— the Rattle
Conference— took place in the early summer at which high-ranking
British and American commanders, as well as members of Morgan's staff, g discussed naval, air, technical, and training facets of the operation.
Meeting at Quebec in August, the Combined Chiefs of Staff
Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp, 22, 44, 49-52, 71-73, Frederick Morgan, Overture to Overlord (Garden City: Doubleday & Co,, 1950), gives an account of COSSAC's role in the planning process during 1943 (hereafter cited as Morgan, Overture to Overlord), Q Rattle Conference Report, 28 June-2 July 1943, Comnaveu, series II, folder 152.
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approved Morgan's Overlord plan but suggested that it be enlarged. The
eOSSAC staff could not prepare tactical plans until the command struc
ture had been determined. Subordinate leaders were soon named:
General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, commanding the Twenth-first Army
Group, would be in charge of the ground forces; Air Chief Marshal Sir
Trafford Leigh-Mallory would supervise the air forces; and Admiral Sir
Bertram H. Ramsay, commander in chief of the Allied Naval Expeditionary
Force (ANCXF), would oversee the naval components. After the Tehran
Conference, Roosevelt appointed Eisenhower as the supreme commander
of the Allied forces. When Eisenhower reached London on 14 January
g 1944, his staff assumed COSSAC's planning functions.
Following Eisenhower's arrival, his planners expanded the
assault forces to five divisions landing on a wider front. On
1 February, the principal subordinate commanders announced the
"Neptune" initial joint plan (Neptune referred to the amphibious
assault phase of Overlord), and on the twenty-eighth Ramsay issued the
naval outline plan. American and British naval forces were to trans
port, land, and support the Allied armies on a fifty-mile front in
the Bay of the Seine between the Cotentin Peninsula and the Orne River.
The British Eastern Naval Task Force, commanded by Rear Admiral Sir
Philip Vian, RN, would land Lieutenant General Sir Miles C. Dempsey's
g Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 11: The Invasion of France and Germany: 1944- 1945 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1957), pp. 23-24 (hereafter cited as Morison, Invasion of France and Germany).
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Second Army on three beaches between Arromanches and the Orne River,
while Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk's Western Naval Task Force would put
ashore the U.S. First Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Omar N.
Bradley, on two beaches of the Carentan estuary. Kirk's command
encompassed Admiral Hall's Force "0," carrying Major General Leonard T.
Gerow's Fifth Corps to the Omaha beach; Rear Admiral Don P. Moon's
Force "U," landing Major General J. Lawton Collins's Seventh Corps on
the Utah beach; and Commodore C. D. Edgar's follow-up Force "B," with
Major General Charles H. Gerhardt aboard, lifting the rest of the
Fifth Corps and engineer special units to the Omaha beach later on
D-Day. The large task force would also include a service force and a
Mulberry-A force.
Complicating the planning, as well as the preparation stages,
of the invasion was the complex naval command structure. Kirk's force
included all American naval forces slated for Neptune and reported to
three higher command levels: to Ramsay, ANCXF, for planning, training
and active operations; to Admiral Harold R. Stark, commander of naval
forces in Europe and of the Twelfth Fleet, for logistics and
Ibid., pp. 29, 333-37; Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 173- 74; Kirk to King, 5 February 1944, Records of the Operations Division, Office of the Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, series III, Overlord file, OA, NHD (records from this collection hereafter cited as FX03 [Ops Division], Cominch). Some of the problems with planning and with personality clashes are described in Ralph Ingersoll, Top Secret (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1946), pp. 3-109.
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administration; and to King, commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet,
for other operational duties. In addition, the British exercised
operational control over American naval forces within the areas of
11 British home commands. Allied naval cooperation would be severely
tested during the months before the Normandy invasion.
Preparation
Definitive planning for Operation Neptune-Overlord lagged far
behind the establishment of U.S. naval forces in the United Kingdom to
prepare for a cross-channel assault. Admiral Hewitt had inspected
sites for potential bases in the summer of 1942 and then sent a few
officers and men to Rosneath, Scotland; this group became the nucleus
of Amphibious Forces, Europe, On 15 July 1943, another command.
Landing Craft and Bases, Europe, was established; and on 1 September,
Rear Admiral John Wilkes became commander of the new group, as well as
temporary head of the amphibious forces. In late November, Admiral
Hall moved from the Mediterranean to command the amphibians, now named
12 the Eleventh Amphibious Force.
After arriving in Plymouth, Hall reported in London on
27 November to Stark and to Kirk, under whose command the amphibious
Naval Commander, Western Task Force, Report of Normandy Invasion, p. 4, serial 000201 of 25 July 1944, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Kirk's Action Report).
12 Correspondence related to the establishment of the bases in Comnaveu, Advanced Amphibious Training Facilities in U.K., 1943, series II, folder 3, and Landing Craft and Bases, Europe, 1943-1944, series II, folder 106.
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force was to operate. While in the capital city. Hall also paid
official calls on the high commanders of the Royal Navy, including
Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, First Sea Lord. With members of his
13 staff, most of whom had come from the Mediterranean, Hall conferred
with Stark, Kirk, and their staffs for a few days about the antici
pated operation against Normandy and about the organization and duties
of his amphibious force. Returning to Plymouth, Hall broke his flag
in the Ancon on 3 December. His force could now begin to prepare for
the Normandy invasion.In December, plans for Overlord only
included a three-division assault, and the U.S. Navy anticipated
furnishing one assault and one follow-up force. Hall was slated to
command the American assault.
Kirk had given Hall a free hand in setting up the amphibious
force. When Hall arrived, the force consisted of the landing craft
and bases organization, 235 landing craft, and a few small special
units. Charged with training the assault forces for battle and, in
1 -j Roster of Officers, 11th Amphibious Force, 1 May 1944, OA, NHD. Hall chose members of his staff with care, and many of these men stayed with him through a number of operations. After selecting competent officers. Hall then easily delegated authority to them.
14 25 November-3 December 1943, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force, 14 November 1943-30 September 1944, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force); 27 and 30 November 1943, Diary of Adm. Harold R. Stark, 1942-1944, Comnaveu, series II, folder 172 (hereafter cited as Stark's Diary).
^^"Administrative History: Commander, U.S. Naval Forces in Europe," 5:358 (hereafter cited as "Administrative History: Comnaveu")
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conjunction with the British, with defending the advanced amphibious
bases. Hall utilized essentially the same kind of organization that he
had used in the Mediterranean. He divided his force into functional
task groups.
Under the efficient leadership of Admiral Wilkes, the landing
craft and bases group had the responsibility of commanding the naval
bases for landing craft in Britain and also for naval sections of army
bases. In addition, Wilkes trained men to handle the landing craft,
maintained the craft, and supplied manned landing craft for joint
training exercises and experiments. Soon after his arrival in Britain,
Wilkes began setting up bases for repair and overhaul, training, and
supply. As the number of men and craft increased during the first
half of 1944, Wilkes's command expanded to sixteen bases and serviced
2,493 ships and craft for the Normandy assault.
Another task group, transports, commanded by Commodore C. D,
Edgar, who had come from the Mediterranean, had to train troops for
amphibious operations. In addition, the four divisions of the
transport group participated in the joint training exercises. Feeling
somewhat in the dark about the planning activities, Edgar became a
^^Operation Plan B-44, 11th Amphibious Force, 12th Fleet, serial 0024 of 20 January 1944 and revised 20 March 1944, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Operation Plan B-44); 20 January 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force.
^^Commander, Amphibious Bases, U.K., "A History of the United States Naval Bases in the United Kingdom," pp. 12-13, 21, serial 00385 of 1 November 1944, JLH Papers (hereafter cited as "U.S. Naval Bases").
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little unhappy about being "sequestered" with his transports in the
early months of the year; but as invasion preparations proceeded, he
soon became increasingly active and effectively commanded Force "B"
18 during the Neptune operation.
The gunfire support group, under Captain Lorenzo S. Sabin, had
bases at Falmouth, Salcombe, and Dartmouth, with the group commander's
base at Plymouth. Sabin handled special support craft and trained the
men on LCTs and other small vessels in support fire techniques.
Sabin's task was complicated by impractical army schemes of having
105-mm. howitzers firing from the LCTs as the craft approached shore.
Commander J, F, Curtin's beach battalions prepared for amphib
ious operations by thorough training among themselves and jointly
with the engineer shore parties. Other units mastered techniques for
beach salvage of landing craft, while demolition units trained in the
removal of underwater obstacles. Still another task group, escorts,
prepared to accompany the landing craft and to act as control vessels
20 during operations.
In addition to the training provided by these task groups, the
amphibious training center encompassed a variety of joint amphibious
schools. Under the guidance of Lieutenant Commander Victor T.
1 8 Operation Plan B-44; Commodore C, D, Edgar to JLH, 24 March 1944, Correspondence: 1944 file, JLH Papers.
^^Operation Plan B-44; Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, p. 197.
20 Operation Plan B-44.
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Boatwright, Hall's gunnery officer. Lieutenant (j.g.) R. G. Osborne
supervised the naval gunfire support school at the British Naval
Academy at Dartmouth and instructed army officers and soldiers in
techniques of naval gunfire control and the accompanying communications.
A separate communications school trained ship and landing craft
personnel in amphibious communications, and the transport quartermaster
school, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel D. McB. Curtis, taught the
21 army how to handle the combat loading of ships and landing craft.
Maintaining this basic organization, the force conducted
numerous forms of "practice" training. As army and navy groups arrived
in Britain, Hall assigned them to the units with which they would work
in the invasion. A part of the training consisted of taking troops on
the escorts, minesweepers, and destroyers for sea orientation; and the
soldiers had many opportunities to practice driving vehicles on and
off the landing craft and to operate their equipment during the
loading, sailing, and unloading stages. Sailors responsible for army
equipment underwent extensive exercise. Naval training involving boat
operation, beaching and retracting, and unloading cargo from large
ships to smaller craft continued constantly. ^ 2
As the training program grew and developed. Hall's amphibious
force also instructed smaller army and navy units, at the request of
their commanders, in various aspects of joint landings. The troops had
^^Ibid.
^^"Administrative History: Comnaveu," 5:361-62.
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received preliminary training for amphibious landings before they left
the United States, and Hall's command gave them further practice and
intensified training after they arrived in the United Kingdom.
Throughout the five-month preparation period, the force provided both
the planning and exercise facilities for numerous individual components,
including infantry regiments, armored regiments, field artillery and
gun battalions, regimental and battalion combat teams, cargo exercise
forces and engineer shore and special brigades, and air force and
special troop units. A training exercise usually lasted four days:
the first day for loading and sortie, the second and third days for
two daylight and one nighttime landing in the exercise area, and the
23 fourth day for returning to the bivouac area.
Specialized joint training continued throughout the period.
Gunfire support units, including British and French, were put through
their paces by Boatwright and practiced in the Slapton Sands assault
area. The amphibious force also trained three joint assault signal
company shore fire control units and naval gunfire spotter parties for
an airborne division. To improve gunfire spotting, responsible
commanders increased the number of naval gunfire liaison officers to
twelve men and two officers for each army and airborne division, and
they made sure that each regimental combat team had experienced
liaison officers assigned to it. All of these men went through a
23 11th Amphibious Force (TF 123), Training Orders— Neptune, 15 January-2 April 1944, and 1, 15, and 26 May 1944, OA, NHD.
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rigorous course of instruction, including adjustment of destroyer and
cruiser fire, and took part in firing exercises at Slapton Sands and
at Clyde, where the heavy fire support ships were kept. The men
specially trained in gunfire support also participated in the joint
training exercises, thereby increasing their expertise in spotting,
but a limited allotment of ammunition prevented intensive practice
with American destroyers. These shore fire control parties then
boarded their assigned ships for the Normandy attack for a week's
observation of firing exercises.A new method of communication-—
the SCR-609 FM voice radios— facilitated contact between the shore
25 fire control parties and fire support ships.
Assault loading techniques, a perennial problem in the
Mediterranean operations, became the object of intensive training
before Normandy. Hall's command conducted a transport quartermaster
school and instructed twelve classes of army personnel in combat
loading of transports, landing craft, military transports, and cargo
. , 26 ships.
Anticipating the necessity for removing underwater and beach
obstacles. Hall had established a demolition unit of the joint
24 Commander, Assault Force "0," Action Report: Assault on Vierville-Colleville Sector, Coast of Normandy, pp. 99-100, serial 00876 of 27 July 1944, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Hall's Action Report); Kirk's Action Report, annex I, pp. 2-3.
25 Victor T. Boatwright to author, 5 September 1977.
96 Hall's Action Report, p. 85.
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amphibious schools. Naval combat demolition specialists, working with
two battalions of army combat engineers, underwent a special three-
week program in obstacle removal. The importance of demolition
tactics intensified when Hall learned of the extensive German use of
sophisticated obstacles on and off some of the Normandy beaches. Army
combat engineers worked with the demolition experts in conducting
programs stressing removal of obstacles similar to those anticipated
in the assault area. Altogether, 810 officers and men from 203 army
and air force units received specialized training in gunfire support,
27 transport quartermaster, and demolition tactics.
Still more intensive training involved communications. Always
a complex problem in any amphibious assault, communications promised
to be especially difficult in a landing of the size and scope of
Normandy. The amphibious force established a communications school
which provided comprehensive training to handle the projected volume
of traffic. The Normandy theater contained a large number of radio
transmitters, broadcasting stations, and jammers that clogged all bands
of frequencies. Also, Hall received a multitude of conflicting
instructions from higher levels which further complicated the prepara
tions. His communications officer. Captain R. N. Mailing, who had
served ably on Hall's staff in Morocco and now was with him again.
27 Ibid., pp. 85-87. See Vice Adm. Friedrich Ruge, "With Rommel Before Normandy," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 80 (June 1954): 613-19, for Rommel's naval adviser's description of German defensive tactics and obstacles (hereafter cited as Ruge, "With Rommel Before Normandy").
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supervised the training of men from the army and navy, both in class
rooms and on board ships and craft, in the techniques of amphibious
28 communications.
Training of officers and sailors to man the landing craft and
boats fell to Admiral Wilkes's landing craft and bases group. Captain
R. E. Nelson, assisted by Colonel James E. Kerr, USMC, pushed the
landing craft crews through intensive instruction and practice in all
facets of boat operation, including ship-to-shore movement, landing
and retracting the craft in surf, and maneuvers. More training
involved beach party operations, beach markings, and salvage and boat
maintenance. After the crews had mastered boat operations, they
received instruction in fields as assorted as first aid, air craft
recognition, bomb disposal, the use of small arms, and signaling. The
landing craft crews not only had practices at the bases but they
participated in the joint training exercises throughout the early
months of 1944. Prior to D-Day, Wilkes's efficient organization had
trained crews of nearly 2,500 ships and craft'— about 87,000 men.
Wilkes managed to keep track of the great number of craft through a
Kardex system which contained a concise history of each craft in the
command. In addition to training crews, Wilkes also had to provide
routine maintenance for ships of the Eleventh Amphibious Force. So
successful was his outfit that an astounding 99.3 per cent of American
28 Hall's Action Report, pp. 124-25,
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oq ships were operational on 1 June.
One matter that continued to trouble Hall during this training
period was the command relationship between the naval and landing force
commanders. He explained to Kirk that it was always necessary to
"convince Army commands that the landing and support of the troops is
the Naval Commander’s responsibility. I hope someday this will be very
clearly stated from the highest commands, and will not remain just a
30 unilateral Naval declaration and understanding." A few weeks later,
Kirk and Bradley, commanding general of the U.S. First Army, reached
a joint agreement that would resolve command difficulties.
As the training programs quickly accelerated in number and
size throughout the early months of 1944, some Allied leaders held the
vain hope that the Germans, badly battered by Allied bombings, would
collapse. In late November, Admiral Sir Ralph Leatham, commander in
chief at Plymouth, had issued an outline navy plan for Operation
"Rankin-Case C," which described how Kirk's ships would carry elements
of the First Army to La Havre and Rouen if Germany surrendered.
Accordingly, Hall issued an operation plan to provide the transporta-
31 tion of troops in the unlikely event that Germany gave up. The
29 "U.S. Naval Bases," pp. 21, 27, 30, 125-26. 30 JLH to Kirk, 22 December 1943, Correspondence: 1943 file, JLH Papers.
31 Operation Plan A-44, 11th Amphibious Force, serial 0021 of 14 January 1944, OA, NHD. The COSSAC staff had been working on plans for Rankin since mid-1943. See Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 51, 79-82.
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force had to be prepared for any contingency.
As the task groups worked with smaller units of the army and
naval forces in "practice" training, Hall's amphibious command organized
and executed over two dozen large and small-scale joint training
exercises with the army. The exercises ranged in strength from
battalion to reinforced division landings, and naval beach battalions
joined in the practices. The force used naval gunfire support and air
support (reconnaissance and bombardment) for the larger exercises. At
least air support was part of the operation plans; the planes usually
failed to arrive, because of unsuitable weather or some other reason.
The ships were not fully combat loaded, so the participants could not
simulate the congestion present on the beaches at the end of D-Day;
this was a real weakness in these exercises. Captain E. H. von Heim-
berg. Hall's chief of staff, and Captain Marion N. Little, his plans
officer, prepared the plans and orders for these exercises. Both men
had been with the admiral in the Mediterranean and continued their
outstanding work in Britain. Because American destroyers did not
reach the theater until the last part of the training period, the force
relied on British ships, furnished by Leatham's Plymouth command, for
fire support. In most of the exercises, the troops embarked at ports
in southern Britain and landed either at Slapton Sands in Start Bay or
in Tor Bay.^^
32 Hall's Action Report, pp. 83-84.
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Hall's responsibilities in conducting joint training in
amphibious operations involved both planning and supervising or
personally commanding the major exercises. The first of these,
Exercise "Duck I," held on 3-4 January 1944, took place for political
reasons, although the new amphibious command had not had sufficient
time to prepare for it. Churchill had forced the removal of the
residents of the Slapton Sands area near Dartmouth, designated as a
practice site for the gunnery people working under Commander Boat
wright, and had exerted pressure on American commanders in London to
stage an exercise using live ammunition by the first of the year. A
party of two dozen, including high-ranking officers of the army, navy,
and air forces of both countries, came from London to observe the
mock attack. Ships and craft from Hall's amphibious force landed
Major General G. H. Gerhardt's Twenty-ninth Infantry Division, a part
of the Fifth Army Corps, and Wilkes provided nearly 170 landing craft
33 for the exercise. Admiral Leatham retained overall control of all
naval forces in case of emergency but surrendered normal tactical con
trol of all ships, except covering forces, to Hall for the e x e r c i s e . ^4
There were no real inter-Allied problems with this type of command
arrangement, and other rehearsals used the same procedure. With this
33 JLH interview, 23 March 1977; Rear Adm. Alan G. Kirk to JLH, 18 December 1943, Correspondence; 1943 file, JLH Papers; "U.S. Naval Bases," p. 15; JLH Oral History, pp. 159-60.
34 Adm. Sir Ralph Leatham to JLH, 1 January 1944, Correspondence: 1944 file, JLH Papers.
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first practice. Hall began the policy of assigning naval and army
participants to their permanent units so they could train together
35 through the remainder of the exercises.
Rapidly planned and executed. Exercise "Duck I" had many
ragged edges and was unlike a true rehearsal. The assault force lacked
a sufficient number of escorts, minesweepers, control vessels, and
gunfire support ships to put on a realistic show. Bradley also
experimented with 105-mm. guns firing from LCTs over the assault waves—
an arrangement Hall found unsatisfactory because the howitzers lacked
stabilized sights.Within the next several days officers from the
army, the Royal Navy, and the amphibious force met on board the Ancon
and then at Fifth Army Corps headquarters at Taunton to analyze the
37 landings. These frank discussions revealed errors of omission and
38 commission that all commanders would try to correct in the future.
After the first practice in early January, Hall's amphibians
had more time to prepare for the larger exercises. "Duck II," landing the
35 "Administrative History: Comnaveu," 5:352.
^^JLH to Kirk, 22 December 1943, Correspondence: 1943 file, JLH Papers.
37 Critique of 29th Division was held on 8 January. Hall and four staff members attended. See 11th Amphibious Force Staff Memo No. 8-44, n.d., folder 620, box 9451, Commander 11th Amphibious Force Office Files, RG 313, NRC.
38 7, 11 January 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force. Ruppenthal, Logistical Support, 1:347, listed army complaints as poor joint coordination and planning, "poor traffic control and discipline, slow movement, overloading of both troops and vehicles, and violations of security."
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116th Infantry Regimental Combat Team, took place in mid-February, and
the landing force experimented with the new Rhino ferries— pontoon
units joined together to form barges and propelled by outboard motors—
39 to unload vehicles and cargo from the LSTs. ' Before the exercise
Hall conferred with Generals Bradley, Gerow, Clarence R. Huebner,
commanding the First Infantry Division, and Gardner Helmick, Fifth
Corps artillery officer, about landing techniques; and all of these
officers observed the operation. Several days after "Duck II," they
held a joint critique on board the Ancon. Hall firmly believed that
these "before" and "after" conferences benefited the commanders of
both services and increased their understanding of each other's opera
tional problems. Better than "Duck I," this second joint exercise
still revealed difficulties with coordination, traffic control, and
handling of landing craft.
Another full-scale exercise, "Fox," held from 10 to 12 March,
involved elements of Gerow's Fifth Corps that would land at Omaha
beach: the 16th and 116th Infantry, reinforced, the headquarters unit
of the First Infantry, the operating headquarters and communications
39 Walter Karig, Stephen L. Freeland, and Earl Burton, "Rhinos and Mulberries," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 71 (Decem ber 1945): 1419 (hereafter cited as Karig et al., "Rhinos and Mulber
ries") ; Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, p. 8 6 . In an interview, 5 April 1977, Hall stated that he was unimpressed with the Rhinos and considered them a waste of time and money.
40 11th Amphibious Force, Training Order G-44, serial 0087 of 4 February 1944, OA, NHD; 13, 14, and 18 February 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force; Ruppenthal, Logistical Support, 1:348.
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detachments of the Fifth Corps, and two engineer special brigades. In
addition to the American army officers commanding the practicing units,
Bradley, a few British generals, Ramsay and Kirk observed the exercise
from the Ancon or from an LCI(L). Two assault forces, commanded by
Commodore Edgar and Captain W. 0. Bailey, established the landing
force ashore and supported the troops until they secured their shore
objectives.The "Fox" exercise saw the first use of attack transport
ships (APAs) and successfully experimented with loading DUKWs with
ammunition designed for emergency use and with new methods of water
proofing vehicles.Following the now-standard custom, participating
commanding officers had attended an orientation conference in the
Ancon in early March and then took part in the evaluation after the
exercise. Ramsay wrote that he thought the assault forces had handled
the landings efficiently, and the British generals were favorably
impressed with the exercise.
Later in March, Admiral Moon, who had arrived to command group
two of the Eleventh Amphibious Force and subsequently led the assault
^llth Amphibious Force, Operation Order L-44, serial 00215 of 3 March 1944, OA, NHD; 3, 9, 10, 11, and 12 March 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force; 30 March 1944, War Diary, Commander Task Force 122, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as War Diary, CTF 122).
^^"Administrative History; Comnaveu," 5:364; Ruppenthal, Logistical Support, 1:349.
43 3 and 16 March 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force; Adm. Sir B. H. Ramsay to JLH, 12 March 1944, and Kirk to JLH, 22 March 1944, Correspondence: 1944 file, JLH Papers. Kirk's letter also in box TS-120, Commander 11th Amphibious Force Office Files, RG 313, NRC.
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force on the Utah beach in Normandy, organized and conducted Exercise
"Beaver," from 29 to 31 March. Moon was a perfectionist who was
reluctant to delegate authority, and he conferred with Hall often
before running the exercise. Hall watched "Beaver" from an LCI(L),
and Moon's group put the Eighth Infantry Regimental Combat Team
ashore and resupplied the troops as they moved i n l a n d .^4
As D-Day drew nearer. Hall's amphibious force held two full-
scale rehearsals: Moon's group conducted exercise "Tiger," with
elements of the Ninth Air Force and the First Army, and Hall's Force
"0" conducted "Fabius" with the First Infantry Division. Full-scale
rehearsals, duplicating as exactly as possible the actual assault
landings, were nearly as complicated to plan and to execute as a real
amphibious invasion. Indeed, the same procedures were followed: the
army commander submitted a scheme of maneuver ashore; the naval com
mander pointed out impracticalities from the seaborne viewpoint; both
resolved their differences; the operations staff of the naval com
mander devised a landing attack plan to get the troops ashore at the
time and in the order desired by the army commander ; and then the
joint staffs drew up communications, air support, naval gunfire support,
and combat loading plans for the operation. While these plans were
being formulated, joint training continued in the naval gunfire support.
44 11th Amphibious Force, Training Order T-44, serial 00278 of
12 March 1944, OA, NHD; 30 March, 3 and 6 April 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force; JLH Oral History, pp. 213-14; "Administrative History: Comnaveu," 5:364.
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communications, and transport quartermaster schools.^5 Altogether,
preparation for a rehearsal or an amphibious attack was a time-
consuming project involving close cooperation among army, navy, and,
occasionally, air force commanders and their staffs.
Moon held his Exercise "Tiger" rehearsal on 27-28 April. The
landing simulated the prospective attack on Utah beach. Involving
25,000 troops and 2,750 vehicles, the landing force used many of the
craft that would put it ashore at Normandy.Unfortunately, German
E-boats attacked a convoy of seven LSTs en route to the Slapton Sands
practice area and sank two of the ships and damaged another. The
dead or missing from this engagement totaled 639. Other problems
plagued the exercise: the beach engineer organization broke down,
inter-service coordination was inadequate, and, reminiscent of the
Mediterranean, air support did not arrive.
Hall's "Fabius I" dress rehearsal, 3-6 May, landed nearly all
units of the First Infantry scheduled to assault the Omaha beaches.
Hall tried to use ships and craft allotted to Force "0," but late
arrivals and necessary alterations reduced the landing craft to only
sixty-to-seventy per cent of those actually slated for the Normandy
^^JLH Oral Hidtory, pp. 259-60,
^^"Administrative History: Comnaveu," 5:364-65; Ruppenthal, Logistical Support, 1:351.
47 28 April 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force; Omar N. Bradley, A Soldier's Story (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1951), pp. 247-48 (hereafter cited as Bradley, Soldier’s Story).
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attack. The rehearsal followed as closely as possible the task organi
zation, the attack landing plan, and the assembly, sortie, and
movement of the plan for the upcoming invasion of France; and it used
the maximum amount of air and naval bombardment that it could muster.
The bottom and beach gradients around Slapton Sands differed from
assault beaches of the Vierville-Colleville area; and, although the
force used beach obstacles, it did not plant underwater obstacles.
Preceded by air and naval bombardment, 25,000 troops landed, aided by
engineers to remove obstacles and mines and to open beach exits. In
"Fabius I," as well as in "Tiger," a full-scale unloading of ships
gave the shore parties and beach battalions a realistic exercise in
handling the usual beach pileups and provided opportunities for
49 necessary improvements. Assorted high-ranking military commanders
watched Hall’s rehearsal: Generals Gerow; Huebner; Bradley; Brigadier
General W. M. Hoge, commander of the Provisional Engineer Special
Brigade; Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton, who commanded the Ninth
Air Force; Major General John C. H. Lee, the deputy theater commander
and also head of Services of Supply; and Admirals Kirk and Morton L.
Deyo.^® Again, army, navy, and Royal Navy officers met for prelanding
^^Hall’s Action Report, p. 8 8 ; "Administrative History: Comnaveu," 5:365-66.
49 Ruppenthal, Logistical Support, 1:353; Kirk’s Action Report, annex G, p. 1.
^^2 and 4 May 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force; Harry C. Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower: The Personal Diary of Captain Harry C. Butcher, USNR (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1946), p. 533
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and follow-up conferences.^^ Although army commanders considered the
"Fabius" exercise heartening. Hall knew that there were many rough
edges still to be smoothed for an effective amphibious assault.
Under Hall's direction, the training exercises and rehearsals
conducted by his amphibious force drew upon the experience he had
acquired as commander of the Eighth Amphibious Force in the Mediter
ranean. Insisting on rigorous practice for the component naval parts
of the attack force. Hall ordered exercises for the landing craft,
transports, gunfire support vessels, sweepers, beach battalions, and
demolition units, As naval forces refined their assault techniques,
joint training exercises increased in size and complexity. First,
battalions and regimental combat teams practiced amphibious landing
tactics; then full division and corps exercises, with sea and air
support, simulated conditions expected in the actual assaults. Hall's
joint amphibious schools instructed personnel in such vital elements
of amphibious warfare as naval gunfire control, communications, combat
loading, and demolition. Attempting the early "marrying-up" of army-
navy units as they would operate for Overlord, Hall recognized the
advantages of each service's familiarity with the other's procedures
(hereafter cited as Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower); 3 and 4 May 1944, War Diary, CTF 122.
^^30 April and 8 May 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force.
^^Maj. Gen. J. C. H. Lee to JLH, 7 May 1944; JLH to Lee, 12 May 1944, Correspondence: 1944 file, JLH Papers.
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and problems. Hall, learning from the beach pile-ups after his first
three amphibious assaults, stressed loading and unloading techniques
and incorporated a full-scale unloading in the final rehearsals.
Not only did Hall’s command conduct joint training programs
and exercises, it was also involved in the development and refinement
of amphibious equipment. There were numerous improvements in the
landing craft under Wilkes's command during the preparations for
Normandy, and many of the deficiencies that Hall had noted after
Sicily and Salerno were corrected. Three LSTs were converted to
fighter direction tenders; others received rearmament, changes of
Welin davits (for improved lowering of landing boats), or modified
guard rails. All of the LSTs were provided with equipment to assist
with casualty evacuation, mooring the Rhinos, loading vehicles, and
communications. The LCI(L)s had steering gear alterations and changes
in heating facilities, and some had radio and radar installations.
The LCTs were structurally strengthened and received bulwark doors
for side loading, Mulock extensions to ramps, and TCS radio transceivers
(high fidelity) and radar equipment. Thirty of the craft got tank
C O ramp extensions. Wilkes, the expert technician responsible for
these improvements, always discussed the changes with Hall.
Other methods of putting materiel on the far shore evolved,
and the naval construction battalion rigged up Rhino ferries— pontoons
^^"U.S. Naval Bases," pp. 61, 96, 122; Kirk's Action Report, p. 14.
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lashed together and powered by dual engines. Thirty-seven of these
self-propelled lighters, measuring 42 feet by 177 feet, were assembled
in Britain and were used to assist in unloading the larger vessels.
Still another innovation, naval mobile radio stations, designed
to ease the gap between the actual assault and the time when more
permanent communications equipment could be established ashore, came
from the base at Exeter. Twelve of these units, made from weapons-
personnel carriers and one-ton trailers, housed sufficient sending and
receiving equipment to strengthen the communications network from
D-Day onward.
Other large-scale experimentation, striving to rectify earlier
problems, led to various improvements. Men at some advanced training
bases devised better methods for waterproofing vehicles, for landing
smaller craft in a surf, for unloading material from coasters,and
for refloating stranded landing craft. In addition, the LST proved
adaptable as a hospital ship.^^
Another new development, the Hagensen pack, provided an
unique explosive that would be used throughout the remainder of the
war to help clear underwater obstacles. Hall's demolition experts
^^"U.S. Naval Bases," p. 114; Karig et al., "Rhinos and Mulber ries," p. 1419.
^^"U.S. Naval Bases," p. 97.
^^Coasters were small British vessels, used for port-to-port passage along the coasts.
^^"Administrative History: Comnaveu," 5:361.
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developed the new device, consisting of a plastic explosive, composi
tion C-2, in order to flatten the German obstacle. Element "C."
Sixteen of the two-pound Hagensen packs had to be attached to each
Element "C" and joined with primacord fuse line and then detonated
CO simultaneously.
While these technical improvements and innovations provided
valuable additions to the capacity of the striking force, other new
engineering schemes were not as promising. When Hall met with First
Sea Lord Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham and Admiral Ramsay shortly after
his arrival in the United Kingdom late in 1943, Cunningham showed him
blueprints for the construction of artificial harbors (Mulberries) off
the French beaches.Not a new idea,^® the projected Mulberries would
CO Francis Douglas Fane and Don Moore, The Naked Warriors (New York: Appletori-Century-Crofts, 1956), pp. 42-43 (hereafter cited as Fane and Moore, Naked Warriors); Commander, Task Force 122, Report on Naval Combat Demolitions Units, Operation Neptune, p. 3, serial 844 of 19 July 1944, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as NCDU Action Report). 59 The story of the development and construction of the Mulberries can be found in Alfred Stanford, Force Mulberry: The Planning and Installation of the Artificial Harbor off U.S. Normandy Beaches in World War II (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1951), (hereafter cited as Stanford, Force Mulberry); and Guy Hartcup, Code Name Mulberry; The Planning, Building and Operation of the Normandy Harbors (London: David & Charles, 1977), (hereafter cited as Hartcup, Code Name Mul berry) . The U.S. Navy followed the experimentation with various parts of the artificial harbors with interest, e.g., CCS Report on Artificial Harbors for Combined Operations, 2 September 1943, Comnaveu, series II, folder 17; Capt. G. A. Duncan to Bureau of Yards and Docks, 11 Septem ber 1943, Comnaveu, series II, folder 65 (Personal File of Cdr. Howard A. Flanigan); CTF 122 to Cominch and CNO, 2 February 1944 and 1 March 1944, Comnaveu, series I, folder 12.
^^Supra, p. 2 0 .
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act as substitutes for major ports to unload LSTs during the early
stages of the invasion. The Mulberries would consist of floating
steel units serving as breakwaters, then a series of thirty-one
enormous concrete caissons (phoenixes) acting as sea walls to create
the artificial harbors, then long piers (whales) running ashore. Ships
of the force attacking the Normandy coast would tow the phoenixes and
sink them in place.As one destroyer sailor to another, Cunningham
asked Hall’s opinion of the Mulberries, and Hall replied that anyone
who had seen the sea toss the 150-ton concrete blocks as if they were
pebbles off the coast of French Morocco would laugh at such a foolish
engineering project. Although Cunningham concurred,Ramsay, apparently
mindful that the idea had been conceived by Roosevelt and Churchill at
the Quebec Conference, disagreed. Hall told Ramsay that his attack
force would succeed in spite of having to bother with the useless
Mulberry paraphernalia, and the process of landing between 150 and 300
LSTs on one tide would be far more efficient than unloading only two
of the ships at one time on a fancy dock that would not weather the
first severe storm. Nevertheless, the construction of two Mulberries—
one each for the British and the American forces— went ahead, at an
^^Karig et al,, "Rhinos and Mulberries," pp. 1415-17; Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, pp. 25-26.
G^Cunningham, Sailor’s Odyssey, p. 595.
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exhorbitant expense to the royal government.
Another equally impractical high-level scheme. Operation Pluto,
envisioned pumping fuel through pipes across the English Channel to
give the attack forces a ready supply of gasoline and oil. No one
seemed to have realized that a pipeline necessitated oil tanks on the
far shore for petroleum storage. Hall felt that if a beach became
clear enough to permit the construction of oil tanks, it was clear
enough to send a naval tanker which could pump the oil more quickly
than a cross-channel pipeline setup. Resistance in such a pipeline
would increase to a point where only a small trickle would actually
arrive ashore in France. Two pipelines finally became operational in
August but quickly broke. Two more were laid in September but also
failed. Finally some of the pipes successfully pumped fuel from the
Straits of Dover to Boulogne.Hall thought that both the Mulberry
and Pluto projects demonstrated the impractical engineering ideas that
could be devised by the well-intentioned Roosevelt and Churchill,
G3jLH Oral History, pp. 133-34, 151, 154-56, 227-29, Cf., Morgan, Overture to Overlord, p. 260, which calls Mulberry a "gigantic and spectacularly successful achievement"; and Hartcup, Code Name Mulberry, p. 141, and Stanford, Force Mulberry, p. 198, who argue that the Mulberry concept permitted the invasion of France without planners’ being worried about ports. A British admiral, B. B. Schofield, Opera tion Neptune (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1974), p. 52, writes that Ramsay was not enthusiastic about the Mulberries (hereafter cited as Schofield, Operation Neptune).
^^Rufus J. Moore, "Operation Pluto,’’ United States Naval Insti tute Proceedings 80 (June 1954): 652-53; Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, pp. 26-27, 218. Both of these writers considered the pipeline effective in delivering fuel. In contrast, Morgan, Overture to Overlord, p. 267, did not think the pipeline was worthwhile.
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acting on the advice of non-maritime engineers. Hall believed that it
would have been to the advantage of these national leaders to have
included a few amphibious force commanders in their operational
planning sessions; such naval officers could easily have pointed to
weaknesses in any projects involving amphibious landings and ultimately
have saved money, manpower, and material.
More successful than either the Pluto or Mulberry ideas were
the Gooseberries. Made by sinking old ships’ hulks at the three-fathom
line. Gooseberries were to create a breakwater for ships and craft near
the beaches. After the landings, tugs towed more than eighty ships to
the appointed line parallel to each of the five Allied assault beaches,
and the old vessels were sunk. The Gooseberries were modestly
effective in providing protection for the craft during the vicious
storm shortly after D-Day.
The proposed use of the new DD (dual drive) amphibious tanks
also came to Hall’s attention. After one of his trips to London, he
went by train with General John C. H. ("Courthouse") Lee to Portsmouth
to attend with Rear Admiral Sir Philip Vian, commander of the British
assault force, a training exercise using the DD tanks. The British-
designed duplex tanks had twin propellers for swimming and a track
drive for going on land. They were to be launched from LCTs, to float
GSjLH Oral History, pp. 132-33, 154, 157, 228-29.
^^Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, pp. 26, 165; JLH Oral History, pp. 135, 154, 227-28.
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ashore with their inflatable "bloomersand to provide immediate
artillery support. During the exercise. Hall watched the big thirty-
two ton tanks lumber slowly toward shore, then parallel the beach,
within easy range of enemy machine guns; they were sitting ducks. The
admiral was unimpressed and was opposed to including the DD tanks in
his attack force, but Bradley thought that they would be a winning
secret weapon in the Normandy invasion. Hall reluctantly agreed to
land the tanks in the first wave at Omaha beach.
As commander of the Eleventh Amphibious Force, Hall bore the
responsibility for technical improvements and innovations that took
place within his command. Not of a mechanical bent, he did encourage
technicians such as Wilkes and gave general supervision to changes in
the landing craft and in demolition techniques. Opposing the artificial
harbors and related equipment and unenthusiastic about virtually
anything concerning pontoons, Hall nevertheless found his force saddled
with the new gimmicks.
Naturally, organizing and commanding the amphibious force and
preparing for the invasion of France required the closest collaboration
between joint and combined forces. Commanders at Hall's echelon did
not have to make the invasion decisions; rather, they had to execute,
at the force level, the orders of Eisenhower and Ramsay. Performing
as both the commander of all amphibious training and as an attack
^^Hall's Action Report, p. 101; JLH Oral History, pp. 179-80; JLH interviews, 23 March and 5 April 1977.
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force commander. Hall maintained close contact with Admiral Leatham at
Plymouth, Admiral Kirk in London, his own staff and subordinate com
manders, and army officers commanding the Fifth Corps and the First and
Twenty-ninth Infantry Divisions, whom his force would land in Normandy.
Many planning conferences occurred during the six months before D-Day.
Among the earliest was a meeting on 25 November with Admiral
Leatham, the commander at Plymouth. Leatham had direct control of the
movement of all ships in his command area, but his principal task was
to make British facilities and resources available for American use.
Shortly after Hall's arrival, Leatham showed him a large underground
command post with elaborate communications systems that the British
had built at Plymouth, When Leatham informed Hall that he would be in
the shelter during the Normandy attack. Hall laughed and replied that
he intended to be in his flagship off the coast of France during the
invasion.Since the Ancon was berthed at Plymouth, Hall saw Leatham
often, and the two admirals developed a good working relationship and a
close friendship. They were able to cope with combined naval problems
ranging from the British officer's having overriding control of U.S.
ships in the Plymouth command to the establishment of an Anglo-American
(navy) relations committee to handle social and welfare matters.
^^JLH Oral History, pp. 216-17; JLH interview, 19 April 1977.
Correspondence between the two men reflected a genuine spirit of cooperation, e.g,, Leatham to Hall, 1 and 31 January, 22 February, 17 March, 10 April 1944; Hall to Leatham, 5 and 29 February 1944, Correspondence: 1944 file, JLH Papers.
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Leatham was Hall's most frequent contact with British naval commanders,
and the mutual cooperativeness between them exemplified sound U.S.-
British relations.
Hall's contacts with Admiral Ramsay, ANCXF, were rather
limited; most of the top-level information sifted to Hall through Kirk,
Hall saw Ramsay occasionally in London, and Ramsay sailed in Hall's
flagship for training exercise "Fox" in mid-March and came on board
again when King George VI inspected units of Assault Force "0" before
they sailed for France.After the Allied invasion plan had been
expanded to a five-division assault, Ramsay decided to have two
American and three British naval assault forces. He wrote Hall after
"Fox" that he wanted Forces "0" and "U" formed and working as separate
units. Disturbed, Hall replied that it was advantageous to keep U.S.
units under the Eleventh Amphibious Force because it would facilitate
administration, training, and maintenance. Nevertheless, when the
Western Naval Task Force issued its plan and when Hall received
sufficient ships and craft, the final organization of the two forces
emerged. Admiral M:oon, assigned as commander of Force "U," worked
with the amphibious force as commander of group two for the training
and preparation. In effect, Ramsay's order took amphibious forces
from under Hall's command and put them into a dual attack organization,
which Hall felt was a mistake because Moon, whose only prior amphibious
^^10 March, 25 May 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force.
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experience had been commanding a destroyer squadron in Torch, needed
assistance.
To make operational orders more readily understood, Ramsay
issued a memorandum instructing all staff officers on how to write good
72 orders. In contrast to the American system of writing only the
barest essentials in an upper-echelon order and then leaving the
methods of execution of the order to the good sense of subordinate
commanders, the British tended to overload their orders with minute
detail, leaving little to the discretion of lower commanders.!^ Hall
had spent two years at the Naval War College teaching officers how to
write plans and orders that could not be misunderstood and had subse
quently written many orders himself, and he felt that Ramsay's
memorandum was useless and paid no attention to it.^^ The memorandum
on orders writing was another example of less-than-harmonious
relations between Ramsay and American naval officers. Kirk also found
7^Ramsay to JLH, 12 March 1944, and JLH to Ramsay, 14 March 1944, Correspondence: 1944 file, JLH Papers; JLH Oral History, p. 162.
79 Ramsay Memorandum to All Staff Officers, 28 February 1944, Amphibious Doctrine file, JLH Papers.
73 Kirk's Action Report, p. 6 ; annex A, pp. 1-2; "Reminiscences of Alan Goodrich Kirk," Oral History Research Office, Columbia University, 1962, p. 286, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Kirk's Oral History); Capt. Lyman A. Thackrey, Informal Account of Naval Planning for Operation Neptune, no serial, 15 September 1945, OA, NHD.
74 JLH Oral History, pp. 157-58; JLH interviews, 19 April and 7 May 1977.
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75 the ANCXF a difficult man to work with,
At a high-level conference at Ramsay’s headquarters, held early
in May to determine the exact time of H-Hour, Hall pleaded for the
landing on the Omaha beach to be on the half-falling tide so that his
demolition teams could remove beach obstacles. Montgomery, however,
would not permit staggered attacks because the Allies would lose any
element of surprise; and Hall acquiesced, although he knew his
76 casualties would be higher because of the decision. After losing
his fight. Hall passed to Ramsay's chief of staff the front page of
a London newspaper that he had just bought. The banner headline read,
"Birth Rate Increases in England," and directly under it another head
line proclaimed, "Ramsay Active Again!" (he had been retired). With
tension over the decision on the timing of H-Hour broken, the officers
had a good laugh. 77
Hall's contacts with other British leaders were not extensive.
In mid-February, after learning that the Allies would not receive as
many ships as they had requested for the invasion, Eisenhower did send
7^Kirk's Oral History, p. 284. Robert William Love, Jr., "Fighting a Global War, 1941-1945," in Hagan, In Peace and War, p. 281, attributes Kirk's hostility to Ramsay's ignoring American advice on naval matters. Morison, Two-Ocean War, p. 388, quotes Hall as saying Ramsay was "quiet, brilliant, intelligent, determined and easy to get on with." In an interview, 7 May 1977, Hall stated that he actually had a fairly low opinion of Ramsay's capabilities.
7^7 May 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force; Morison, Invasion of France and G e r m a n y , p. 33.
77j l h Oral History, p. 188; JLH interview, 19 April 1977.
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Hall to Montgomery's headquarters in London to explain how the United
States naval forces would adapt their attack to the shipping available.
He met with Major General Sir Francis De Guingand, Montgomery's chief
of staff, who immediately informed Hall that Montgomery would not
accept such a reduction. The admiral told De Guingand that he would
not go back and tell the Supreme Allied Commander that Montgomery would
not accept an order— the American services promptly relieve officers
who refuse to accept orders. Hall's job was to explain to De Guingand
78 how to make do with a reduced lift, which he did.
The largest joint and combined meeting which Hall attended
before Normandy took place at St. Paul's School in London on 15 May.
King George VI, Churchill, Eisenhower, Ramsay, Leigh-Mallory, and all
the lesser commanders were there. Indeed, a well-placed enemy bomb
could have wiped out the entire command of the Normandy invasion
79 force. After the group heard the general plans for each of the
services. Field Marshal Jan Smuts, prime minister of the Union of
South Africa, soured the gathering by saying that he doubted that the
invasion would succeed. However, the king earnestly told the officers
that he was confident of success because God was on the Allied side,
80 and Churchill gave one of his rousing, optimistic speeches.
78 JLH Oral History, pp. 75, 163-64.
7^Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, pp. 69-70; Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower, p. 539; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1948), p. 245 (hereafter cited as Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe). 80 JLH Oral History, pp. 165-67.
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Hall's dealings with British commanders typified the uneven
pattern of Anglo-American naval relations prior to Normandy. He had
great admiration for Leatham, and the two officers without difficulty
handled naval matters in the Plymouth command. Disagreeing with
Ramsay's splitting the Eleventh Amphibious Force into attack forces
before training was complete and regarding ANCXF's ideas on preparation
of orders as foolish. Hall did not consider Ramsay the most competent
81 man to lead Allied naval forces. The confrontation with De Guingand
over the reduced lift demonstrated a British arrogance that the
American admiral would not accept. Personalities, as much as military
capabilities, doubtlessly interplayed in setting the tone of Anglo-
American harmony— or lack of it.
Of the American naval leaders, Kirk was the one with whom
Hall initially worked out the organization of the amphibious force and
the evolution of the plan for Force "0" in Operation Neptune. Prior
to D-Day, set for 5 June, Hall went to London nine times to meet with
his superior, as well as with Stark and other naval officers, and Kirk
made several trips to the Ancon to watch training exercises or to
confer about operations.®^ Kirk had been four classes ahead of Hall
81 Throughout many conversations with the admiral, the author gained the distinct impression that Hall resented British operational control of Neptune-Overlord, He considered Eisenhower to be merely a figurehead, while the British made the overall decisions.
82 Orders and Travel: 7 June 1942-27 December 1945 file, JLH Papers.
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at the Naval Academy, and his prior amphibious experience included duty
as commander of the amphibious force of the Atlantic Fleet and of the
Scoglitti force at Sicily, Hewitt, as well as Hall, had been unpleas
antly surprised when King appointed Kirk to command the American forces
83 in Neptune; Hewitt considered Hall the more able officer.
Stark, commander of the naval forces in Europe, and of the
Twelfth Fleet, was actually outside the chain of operational command
for the Normandy invasion, but was responsible for handling the navy's
logistical and administrative matters for Overlord. Hall always saw
him during his London trips, and Stark occasionally visited Hall's
flagship. After spending a few days in the Ancon in late February,
Stark graciously wrote that in considering the magnitude of the job
ahead, he gained a great feeling of security because "under your
steady and controlling hand all that can be done will be done towards
creating an effective Army-Navy team," which he expected Hall to lead
with sound judgment.Stark and Hall had a warm regard for each
8 S other, and Hall considered Stark a successful naval officer.
During one of these visits to London in early February, Hall
®®JLH interviews, 23 March and 5 April 1977. To direct questions about his opinion of Kirk's ability. Hall preferred not to comment. Perhaps Kirk was a better diplomat and administrator than operational naval commander.
^^24 and 26 February 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force; Adm. H. R. Stark to JLH, 29 February 1944, Correspondence: 1944 file, JLH Papers.
^^JLH interview, 7 May 1977.
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received, by order of King George VI, an honorary appointment as
Companion of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath for "great skill
and devotion to duty" as commander of the Gela force in the Sicily
assault. Other naval commanders awarded the same decoration for the
Sicily invasion were Admirals S, S. Lewis, Conolly, and Davidson;
Hewitt got an even higher decoration: Knight Companion of the Bath.
Only Kirk and Hall actually received the awards at the ceremony, which
the First Lord of the Admiralty, all the sea lords. Stark, and the
American ambassador attended. After reading the citation, the First
87 Lord of the Admiralty hung the British decoration around Hall's neck.
Another trip to London in mid-February involved the "Landing
Craft Conference," at which Major General John E. Hull of General
Marshall's staff and Rear Admiral Charles M. Cooke of King's planning
88 staff met with members of Eisenhower's staff, Kirk, and Hall. The
Allies had a projected shortage of landing craft for the Normandy
invasion, and at the conference the officers arranged for the transfer
of forty-one British LSTs and LCIs from the Mediterranean and seven
additional LSTs from the United States. More effective loading and
® 4 December 1943, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force; 1 February 1944, Stark's Diary; Kirk to JLH, 19 January 1944, Correspondence: 1944 file, JLH Papers. In informing Hall of the decoration. Stark commented that every Britisher coming out of the Mediterranean spoke of Hall with admiration and affection. Stark to JLH, 16 November 1943, Correspondence: 1943 file, JLH Papers.
®7j l h interview, 4 May 1977,
^^12, 13, 15, 16 February 1944, Stark's Diary.
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serviceability of available ships and craft would provide sufficient
lift for the troops,®9
More discussions at the conference focused on gunfire support
ships. The British had agreed to assume responsibility for gunfire
support for the Normandy invasion, and King, wanting to keep maximum
strength in the Pacific, had concurred. Hall's assault force had been
assigned the aged British battleship, Warspite, which limped along at
a speed of ten knots and boasted one operating turret; the old American
battleship, Arkansas ; a few small British destroyers; two French
cruisers; and a Dutch gunboat. When Hall heard this, he banged his
fist on the table and said that it was a crime to launch the most
important amphibious attack in history with such inadequate gunfire
support. Cooke, unsympathetic to European needs, admonished Hall by
saying that he had no right to talk like that, and Hall replied that
no one had a better right since he was landing the Fifth Corps and the
Rangers on a heavily defended beach. Hall knew Cooke could have him
relieved of his command, but he was determined to fight for adequate
support ships. He wanted a couple of destroyer squadrons detached
from convoy duty for the Neptune operation. He did get more American
combatant ships— three battleships and two destroyer squadrons, which
he trained in April and May.^^ Hall, rather than Kirk, took the
89 15, 17, 18, 20 February 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force; Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, p. 54. QO JLH Oral History, pp. 131-32, 177-78; Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, p. 56; JLH interviews, 13 April and 7 May 1977;
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initiative at the conference in demanding more fire support for the
Normandy attack, although Kirk, at Bradley's suggestion, had earlier
91 urged the use of U.S. ships for gunfire support.
Hall's contacts with army commanders on the corps and
divisional levels primarily involved numerous conferences with Gerow,
Gerhardt, and Huebner. In addition to the orientation and evaluation
meetings connected with training exercises, the staffs of the army
commanders met often with Hall's staff to plan and to prepare both for
training and for the Normandy assault. Hall saw the three generals
often, especially Huebner, whose First Division would make the assault
on Omaha beach. The close proximity of these army commanders— Gerow
was at Taunton, Gerhardt at Tavistock, and Huebner at Blandford, all
within a short distance from Hall's headquarters at Plymouth— prevented
the difficulties in planning that Hall had experienced in preparing
for the Sicily attack. Hall considered Huebner to be a thoroughly
competent, reliable officer who had risen through the ranks from cook
to commanding general. He had assumed command of the First Division
in North Africa in 1943. Gerow, a Virginia Military Institute graduate,
had commanded the Fifth Corps since July 1943 and was always most
understanding of naval difficulties. Hall became rather disillusioned
11th Amphibious Force Training Orders AA-44, CC-44, DD-44, serials 00584, 00646, 00706, OA, NHD.
^^Kirk to King, 14 January 1944, FX03 (Ops Division) Cominch, series III, Overlord File. Kirk was still pleading for additional
ships in early April. Kirk to King 6 April 1944, and digest of tele phone conversation between Adms. Cooke and Kirk, 5 April 1944, ibid.
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with Gerhardt after he watched the general climb on a stage at Plymouth
during a production of "Arsenic and Old Lace" and, in an extemporaneous
talk, blab nearly all the details of the Normandy attack except the
date of D-Day. The two men got along well professionally, however.
Command difficulties did not pose the problems that the
services had experienced in the Mediterranean. Both Kirk and Bradley,
cognizant of the potential for misunderstandings and confusion in such
a large operation, drew up a joint agreement on 10 February 1944
clearly defining spheres of responsibility for the army and navy for
amphibious training and for the actual landings. They agreed that
neither the army nor the navy would restrict the means, weapons, or
operations of the other and stressed the need for the closest coopera
tion. Most importantly, the document stated that the naval commander
had full control over both services after embarkation until the
commanding general was established ashore. In an attempt to ward off
the usual problems over loading the ships and discharging them at the
beaches, the agreement specified the precise duties of both services
for these functions. Additional joint agreements were issued by
Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers, commanding general of the European
theater of operations, and Admiral Stark and defined the responsi
bilities of the army, navy, and the War Shipping Administration in
92 JLH interview, 4 May 1977,
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no captured ports.
Concurring with Hall's delight at amicable army-navy command
relations, Kirk had no trouble working with Bradley, his army counter
part. Kirk attributed the smoothness of planning sessions with the
First Army to the joint agreement between Bradley and himself, to
previous association of the two staffs during the Sicily campaign,
and to cordial personal relationships. Kirk noted that the same
94 cooperation prevailed in subordinate commands.
Although the same friendliness prevailed in dealing with
Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton, commanding the Ninth Air Force,
the Army Air Forces, as usual, preferred to remain outside the scheme
of joint operations. Air force representatives did participate in
planning sessions for training exercises and for the Neptune operation,
but, although aircraft were slated to aid in the exercises, they often
failed to appear. The air force continued to remain aloof from the
unity-of-command doctrine that the army and navy had adopted. The air
force further complicated the invasion planning by its slowness in
informing the navy of plans for fighter protection, transport and
deployment of airborne troops, and air bombardment; the navy finally
93 Army-Navy Joint Agreements: Normandy file, JLH Papers; Hall s Action Report, p. 78; Kirk's Action Report, p. 5; Blandy, "Command Relations," p. 575.
^^Kirk's Oral History, p. 292; Kirk's Action Report, pp. 3-5; annex A, p. 3.
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95 received the air plan on 12 May.
Although the army in the Atlantic apparently exchanged little
amphibious information with its counterpart in the Pacific, the navy
did not follow this pattern.^® Hall and Kirk exchanged information,
technological advances, plans and orders, and action reports with
Hewitt in the Mediterranean and Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner and
other commanders in the Pacific. Desiring to disseminate the knowledge
gained in those theaters. Hall passed along the information he received
both to Kirk and to his subordinate commanders.^^ xn referring to the
95 "Administrative History: Comnaveu," 5:388; Hall's Action Report, p. 111. Bradley, Soldier's Story, p. 249, is highly critical of Brereton for not participating more in joint training and says there was almost a complete absence of air-ground training before Normandy. Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds.. The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 3: Europe: Argument to V-E Day, January 1944 to May 1945 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951) devote two chapters to air force planning and organization for Overlord and make no mention of joint planning and training (hereafter cited as Craven and Cate, Argument to V-E Day).
96 Ruppenthal, Logistical Support. 1:335. Col. Benjamin B. Talley, who had participated in the Aleutian campaign, was an exception, for he later commanded the Omaha beach organization. Hanson Baldwin main tained that European army commanders did not attempt to learn from the Pacific experiences and criticized this lack of "cross-fertilization" in Baldwin, Battles Lost and Won, p. 284, and in "Reminiscences of Hanson Weightman Baldwin, USN (Ret.)," United States Naval Institute, 1976, p. 417, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Baldwin's Oral History).
^^E.g., 11th Amphibious Force Training Memorandum Tl-44, serial 00423 of 1 April 1944, OA, NHD; Cdr. Amphibious Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet, to Amphibious Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet, circular letter
AL 16-44, serial 588 of 30 March 1944, Operations Plans: 8 th and 11th Amphibious Forces file, JLH Papers; Cdr. 11th Amphibious Force to 11th Amphibious Force, 10 April 1944, with attachments, in Papers of Admiral Alan G. Kirk, series III, (b) 23, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Kirk Papers); Kirk to JLH, 14 April 1944, Kirk Papers, series III, (b) 46. In addition. Hall's office files are replete with copies of training and operation orders from Pacific and Mediterranean commands, in folder 620, boxes 9448, 9449, and 9452, RG 313, NRG.
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sharing of information. Hall commented: "All of us were pioneers,
really, in Joint operations, right at the start of World War II, and
perhaps even as late as 1944 . . . we learned together, I think. We
98 learned the hard way."
In the press of preparing for Operation Neptune-Overlord, the
American naval commanders worked together relatively smoothly. Hall
had no real problems in dealing with Kirk, Stark, or lower-ranking
commanders. The confrontation with Cooke over adequate fire support
ships revealed a strong determination beneath Hall's usually gentle
manner. Joint command problems, prevented before they arose by the
Kirk-Bradley agreement of 10 February, did not surface in Hall's
echelon. The three generals with whom he was most closely associated—
Huebner, Gerow, and Gerhardt— cooperated fully in amphibious planning
and training. Unfortunately, Brereton's Ninth Air Force was not as
involved.
As D-Day approached, the well-run process of getting ready for
the amphibious assault on France contrasted with previous preparations
for seaborne attacks. Gone was the uncertainty and hesitancy, the
groping for means and methods. Naval and army commanders, many
tempered by the trial and error experiences in North Africa and the
Mediterranean, moved with more assurance in preparing to stage the
most complex amphibious operation to date. To be sure, the navy still
98 JLH Oral History, p. 239.
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had problems with the complicated combined command structure, with the
uncertainty of receiving adequate ships and craft and materiel, and
with the Army Air Forces. In spite of these difficulties, the Allies
did assemble an impressive array of strength to throw against Fortress
Europe.
Under Hall's command, the Eleventh Amphibious Force became a
giant reservoir providing ships and trained men for Hall’s Force "0,"
Moon's Force "U," Edgar's Force "B," and Wilkes's support force.
The command expanded from 235 landing craft in November 1943 to 2,493
vessels, including 35 ships and craft assigned from the Twelfth Fleet
and 138 from the Royal Navy, by 31 May 1944. Hall's amphibious command
trained about 124,000 naval officers and men and about 100,000 army
personnel to take part in the invasion to liberate Europe. To Hall
must go credit for establishing and supervising the rigorous specialized
training, for overseeing the large-scale joint exercises and rehearsals,
and for encouraging the innovations in amphibious equipment.
Justifiably, he considered American forces ready for Operation Neptune-
Overlord.
99 Kirk dubbed the training program as "complete and very satis factory" in his Action Report, p. 16.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER V I
OPERATION NEPTUNE-OVERLORD
THE OMAHA BEACHES OF NORMANDY
The Attack
As the projected D-Day— 5 June 1944— approached, American
strategists could be gratified that their long-sought goal— the direct
frontal assault against Germany— was finally at hand. Operation
Neptune-Overlord would have as its object the securing of a "lodgement
on the Continent from which to develop further operations." The
Allied attack on the Normandy coast had been intensively and exhaus
tively charted by the staffs of Eisenhower, Montgomery, Leigh-Mallory,
and Ramsay. The role of the American and British navies would be to
transport, land, and support the Allied armies in the Bay of the
Seine. The British Second Army, commanded by Demsey, would be landed
in three locations by Vian's Eastern Naval Task Force while Bradley's
First Army would be put ashore on two beaches by Kirk's Western Naval
Task Force. After Ramsay issued the naval outline plan of 28 February,
Kirk spelled out his orders for the Western Naval Task Force on
21 April.1
^Operation Plan 2-44, Western Naval Task Force and Task Force 122, serial 00144 of 21 April 1944, JLH Papers.
213
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Hall's administrative duties as commander of the Eleventh
Amphibious Force— preparing ships and landing craft and training
personnel for amphibious operations, administering training bases,
and conducting experimental work and developing new amphibious tech
niques— became entwined with his assignment as commander of Assault
Force "0," a part of the Western Naval Task Force. The plans section
of his staff, under Captain Marion N. Little's direction, had been
working closely with the staffs of Gerow, commanding general of the
Fifth Corps; Gerhardt, who led the Twenty-ninth Infantry Division; and
Huebner, commanding the First Infantry Division, to prepare an assault
plan that met the army's requirements. Because the early distribution
of the operation order, necessary to task group commanders so they
could prepare their own plans, conflicted with the uncompromising
security requirements. Hall called the assault group commanders and
their deputies on board the Ancon while his own order was still being
prepared. These officers offered suggestions for Hall's task force
2 order and became thoroughly familiar with the overall attack plans.
When the staff plan was ready. Hall spent long hours poring
over the complex details of the projected assault, but the plan was
not satisfactory to him, mainly because it focused on operations and
movements rather than on accomplishments. Hall always felt that an
operation plan should show the completed picture— the results of a
^Hall's Action Report, p. 80.
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successful assault-!— rather than dwell on possible consequences of
various small actions. Finally, Hall called in Boatwright, his
versatile gunnery officer, told him the items he wanted included in
the plan, and instructed him to return in an hour. In half that time
Boatwright came back with a plan that Hall considered perfect.
Accordingly, t h e early pages of Hall's operation order described the
desired accomplishments of the whole assault and then went on to
3 explain the required actions of each component of the force.
After the issuing of the operation order on 20 May, another
problem of a potentially grave security nature came to light. Hall
learned that a trusted member of his staff, who had access to copies
of the order, was a homosexual. At that time, such an abnormality was
considered a disgrace and grounds for a court martial; but with D-Day
so near. Hall feared that calling attention to the officer might
precipitate either his committing suicide or revealing secret informa
tion to the enemy. After much painful deliberation and consultation
with a medical officer. Hall decided to let the young officer continue
with his duties until after the Normandy invasion so that he would
not possibly jeopardize Allied success. Afterward, Hall quietly sent
him back to the United States.^
^JLH Oral History, pp. 223-24; Operation Order BB-44, Assault Force "0," (Task Force 124), serial 00681 of 20 May 1944, JLH Papers (hereafter cited as Operation Order BB-44).
^JLH interview, 11 March 1977.
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As Hall made his final preparations for Operation Neptune^ the
amphibious phase of Overlord, King George VI inspected units of the
assault force that were in Portland Harbor. Along with Admirals
Ramsay, Kirk, and John Wilkes, His Majesty and his military and naval
aides met flotilla and group commanders, visited an LST, an LCI(L),
an LCT(5), and an LCT( 6 ), and inspected the operations room of Hall's
flagship, the Ancon. Afterward, the king had luncheon on board the
Ancon.^ In an effort to boost morale, the king often inspected and
encouraged units ready to go into battle.
While Force "0" assembled, the combat loading of the ships
proceeded smoothly and without complications. The careful training
that army officers and men had received in the amphibious force's
transport quartermaster schools, the early assignment of these trained
officers and men to the transports, and the use of advance parties
which preceded the troops on the transports helped to curtail inter
service misunderstandings and mistakes in the loading process. By
restricting the loads of the transports to embarked troops and thirty
small vehicles and excluding stores and equipment. Hall prevented
loading problems such as those that had complicated the Sicily and
Salerno assaults. Hall thought that in the future, the permanent
assignment of a trained transport quartermaster officer to each of
^25 May 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force; Kirk to Sir Eric Mieville: Proposed program for H.M.'s visit, 12 May 1944, Correspondence: 1944 file, JLH Papers.
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the transports and to each group or flotilla of LSTs would eliminate
the need for the transport quartermaster training program before each
amphibious operation.^
As Hall's ships and craft prepared to sail, the Luftwaffe
managed to slip about twenty planes into the PortIand-Weymouth area
early on 28 May. The huge array of ships was a tempting target, and
explosions from near misses and from bombs dropped by parachutes sank
an LCVP and damaged a transport, a destroyer, and seven LCTs, all
assigned to Hall’s force.^
In spite of the damage. Hall’s task force assembled by 30 May
at Portland, Poole, Exmouth, Falmouth, and Belfast. By the evening of
3 June, the force had completed all loading. The Ancon carried the
commanding generals of the troops Hall was to land, including Generals
Q Gerow and Huebner.
Hall's attack force had the responsibility of landing units of
the Fifth Corps on a three-mile front on the Omaha beaches in the
Vierville-Colleville area and of supporting the landing and later army
^Hall's Action Report, pp. 5, 113-14, Kirk, in his Action Report, annex S-1, p. 1, also commended the smooth and prompt combat loading. Moon, however, complained that the array prepared loading plans without consulting the navy and this resulted in overloading the landing craft. See Commander Force "U," Report of Operation Neptune, annex C, p. 1, serial 00198 of 26 June 1944, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Moon's Action Report).
^28 May 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force.
^2, 3, and 4 June 1944, ibid.
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operations by naval gunfire, by running a ferry service to unload the
follow-up ships, by constructing port facilities, and by developing
the small ports in the Carentan estuary. Initially, Hall was to put
ashore 3,300 vehicles and about 34,000 troops, including most of the
First Infantry Division, the 115th and 116th Regimental Combat Teams
of the Twenth-ninth Division, the Second and Fifth Ranger Battalions,
g and parts of the Fifth and Sixth Engineer Special Brigades.
Although all hands were ready to sail, a storm moved across
the Atlantic and whipped up winds to twenty-seven knots, driving rain,
heavy seas, and a low ceiling in the English Channel on 4 June. At
0415 Eisenhower, after deliberating with his meteorologists and top
commanders, postponed the invasion for twenty-four hours.Before
learning of the delay, one convoy of Hall's force had left Portland-
Weymouth and Poole but quickly returned to port. A landing craft
convoy of Moon's force, however, had gotten underway from western
Britain and could not get back to its home port because of the near
gale wind. Hall managed to find space to shelter the craft in the
congested Portland-Weymouth area. Since his own assault force was
under control. Hall spent many hours helping the inexperienced Moon
^Hall's Action Report, pp, 2-3; Operation Order BB-44, pp, 1-4,
8 ; R. W, Thompson, D-Day; Spearhead of Invasion (New York: Ballentine Books, 1968), p. 112 (hereafter cited as Thompson, Spearhead of Invasion.
^^Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, pp. 249-50. A complete account of the weather story by the chief meteorological officer on Eisen hower's staff is by Britisher J. M. Stagg, Forecast for Overlord:
June 6 , 1944 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1971).
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cope with his straggling craft.Hall’s steadying presence during
these tense hours contributed to the efficient regrouping of the
assault forces. "'Jimmy' Hall was not only able; his calm, assured
temperament spread confidence. Two nights before D-Day, when the foul
weather and the postponement was giving almost everyone the jitters,
12 the admiral said , . , 'I do not expect to be repulsed on any beach.'"
Before getting underway. Hall received a letter from Commander
Stratford H. Dennis, RN, who had landed the Rangers in Sicily. The
Ranger commander had requested that Hall assign Dennis the task for
Normandy, which the admiral did with reluctance. Reflecting the
determination and confidence of the British, Dennis vowed to carry out
his task unflinchingly, regardless of losses to craft or personnel.
It had been four years since the Germans had pushed the British out of
France, so "We have a heavy account to settle and it will be settled
with interest," Such enthusiasm was gratifying to Hall.^®
Finally the Allied Expeditionary Force was ready to sail, and
the invasion armada of 5,000 vessels— a mighty fleet to storm Nazi-
dominated Europe— began its voyage across the English Channel at
staggered times from numerous ports throughout the British Isles.
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 5-6; JLH interview, 11 May 1977.
Kirk's Action Report, p. 8 , credited the assault force commanders with "most energetic and skillful management" in reassembling the convoys,
12 Morison, Two-Ocean War, p, 390,
^^Cdr. Stratford H. Dennis, RN, to JLH, 2 June 1944, Corre spondence; 1944 file, JLH Papers. In an interview, 14 May 1977, Hall stated that using the British commander was against his better judgment.
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Under Ramsay's overall command, the three assault forces of Vian's
Eastern Naval Task Force and the two assault forces of Kirk's Western
Naval Task Force headed toward Normandy.
Composed of 691 ships and craft of all types. Hall's force
began its sortie from Portland harbor and other staging ports on
14 5 June. Watching the spectacular sight of the Allied invasion force,
spread as far as the eye could see, gave Hall a feeling of omnipotence.
Surely such might could not be defeated! The long months of prepara
tion, training, and stockpiling of men, ships, craft, supplies, and
materiel were near fruition. Hall always went into an assault with
confidence in a favorable outcome; to have expected to have gotten his
ears pinned back would have been disastrous.
Hall's force, steaming between Moon's ships and the British
Force "G," sailed in two long, unwieldy convoys. Although Hall
realized that such an arrangement left the vessels more vulnerable to
enemy attack, the convoy had to pass through the narrow channels
cleared by the minesweepers. The heavily mined waters off the French
coast greatly endangered the assault forces. Hall's destroyer com
mander, Captain Harry Sanders, excessively worried about the minefields,
had previously talked with the admiral about the necessity of the
early clearing of the gunfire support areas. Hall reminded him of the
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 6 , 18; 5 June 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force.
^^JLH interview, 11 May 1977.
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limited number of sweepers available, and these had to be certain that
the transport areas were thoroughly swept. It was better to accept
some losses of support ships in order to have the transports positioned
on time. Hall told the destroyer commander that if any support vessel
hit a mine, to be sure the ship beached with its batteries bearing on
enemy positions ashore, and to keep firing. In actuality. Hall's task
force lost no destroyers and only six ships and craft because of
mines— certainly an acceptable, though regrettable, number.
The two convoys of Hall's force proceeded to the assault area
with few delays or mishaps, and the Ancon anchored in position about
eleven miles off the coast in the transport area at 0251 on D-Day,
6 June.^^ The other ships and craft rapidly followed and took their
assigned stations. The weather was not good; a fresh breeze stirred
up choppy seas, and the sky was partially overcast; but the assault
18 force was ready to begin Operation Neptune.
Confronting Hall were the beaches of the Omaha area which had
a gradual gradient that became steeper closer ashore. In addition,
the runnels off the beaches posed difficulties for landing craft and
vehicles. Inshore of the assault beaches low embankments, some
strengthened with concrete seawalls, inclined upward to a flat shelf.
^^JLH Oral History, pp. 175-76, 196-97; Hall's Action Report, pp. 72-76; JLH interview, 13 April 1977.
^^Action Report, U.S.S. Ancon, p. 1, serial 0044 of 21 June 1944, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Ancon Action Report).
1 Q Hall's Action Report, p. 7.
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which in turn was topped by a bluff. There was little natural cover
for troops attacking across these beaches. Far different from the
almost tideless Mediterranean, tidal rise and fall on the Omaha beaches
ran as high as twenty-three feet.^^
Added to the natural obstacles such as the shale and shingle
embankments, the assault force faced the ingenious man-made obstacles
20 devised by General Erwin Rommel's coastal defenders. Placed at the
half-tide mark were Element "C" obstacles, gatelike seven-by-ten-foot
steel structures with Teller mines attached to the posts. A few yards
inshore a line of stakes, many with mines, pointed toward the sea.
Behind the stakes were curved rails, log pilings, and V-shaped ramps,
armed with explosives. "Hedgehogs" (steel bars at right angles with
mines on them) and concrete tetrahedra (pyramid-like structures)
dotted the beaches closer to shore. As if these devilish devices were
not enough, the Germans had laced the beaches with mines, wire, and
anti-tank ditches. Largely undetected by Allied intelligence, gun
emplacements, pillboxes, and mobile gun pits looked down on the beaches
19 Operation Plan BB-44, annex A, pp. 4-5. John Mason Brown, Many a Watchful Night (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1944), p. 167, described Hall's beaches as "formidable, inaccessible, bristling with natural defiance."
20 Ruge, "With Rommel Before Normandy," pp. 613-19, told of Rommel's idea of defending the French coasts by obstacles, artillery, and infantry. Ruge maintained that if Rommel had been given a free hand in fortifying the coasts he would have repulsed the Allied attack.
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2 1 from the bluffs. Altogether, the Omaha beaches were the most heavily
fortified with defensive devices of any of the Allied attack sites.
22 They appeared almost unassailable.
Before the amphibious assault began. Army Air Forces planes
attempted to destroy or neutralize coast defenses with heavy bombing
of specific targets early on D-rDay. During a later inspection. Hall
found no indications that the big bombers had inflicted any damage to
the beach defenses. The planes had, in fact, dropped their payloads
inland to avoid any possibility of hitting the landing forces. The
air force bombardment of the Omaha beaches, scheduled for thirty
minutes before H-Hour, did not take place because of unfavorable
weather; and the landing force paid heavily for the absence of bombing
with increased casualties. In addition to prelanding bombings, the
21 Operation Plan BB-44, pp. 16, 18; Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, pp. 114-15; Commander, Task Force 122, Action Report (Report on Naval Combat Demolition Units, Operation Neptune), pp. 10-11, serial 844 of 19 July 1944, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as NCDU Action Report). A German officer. Rear Admiral Kurt Assman, "Normandy, 1944," Military Review 34 (February 1955): 91, stated that Rommel had gotten four million of a proposed fifty million land mines installed on the French coasts (hereafter cited as Assman, "Normandy").
22 Hanson Baldwin, "Amphibious Aspects of the Normandy Invasion," Marine Corps Gazette 28 (December 1944): 37, argued that Japanese defenses on Tarawa and Kwajalein were stronger per foot of sea front than those at Normandy (hereafter cited as Baldwin, "Normandy Inva sion") . Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, p. 115, took issue with this assessment.
23 Hall's Action Report, pp. 7, 111; Craven and Cate, Argument to V-E Day, pp. 190, 192-93. Craven and Cate acknowledge on p. 193 that the air force's main contribution to softening the Omaha beaches was in demoralizing the enemy by "other" air activity.
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air force dropped units of Major General Maxwell D. Taylor's 101st
Airborne Division inland to secure the beach causeways and land
approaches to the Cotentin peninsula. Although their losses of men
and equipment were heavy, the paratroopers did capture some of their
objectives. Since most of the air drops were behind the Utah beaches,
the activities of the paratroopers only indirectly involved the Omaha
assault force.
As H-Hour (0630) on the Omaha beaches drew nearer, naval gun
fire support ships opened their bombardment of assigned targets. For
a scant forty minutes before the first assault waves hit the shore,
battleships, cruisers, destroyers, LGGs (Landing Craft Gunboats), LCTs,
LCSs, and PCs, guided by air force spotter planes, hammered at enemy
positions. Gun batteries hidden in the cliffs, machine gun emplace
ments, pillboxes, anti-tank guns, and roads leading inland took a
severe pounding. Although the gunfire support ships performed well
and accurately, they had insufficient time to pick out all the
prearranged targets in their assigned areas. Slow, aimed, sustained,
close-range fire before the landing would have been more productive
against the heavily defended beach and would have reduced casualties
Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 279-300; Cornelius Ryan,
The Longest Day: June 6 , 1944 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959), pp. 103-86 (hereafter cited as Ryan, Longest Day); and S. L. A. Marshall, Night Drop: The American Airborne Invasion of Normandy (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1962); Craven and Cate, Argument to V-E Day, pp. 186-89.
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25 markedly. As in the Mediterranean, the army's insistence on main
taining the element of surprise^^ precluded a long prelanding bombard
ment.^^
The first of the four initial assault waves to hit all six
Omaha beaches were the DD tanks, due to land ten minutes before H-Hour
and provide covering fire for troops. Since the sea was choppy. Hall
had given permission for the senior army tank officer and the senior
naval officer of the LCT units to make the decision as to whether to
launch the tanks off the landing craft about 6 , 0 0 0 yards from shore.
The officers responsible for getting the tanks ashore in the western
25 Hall's Action Report, pp. 102, 105. See Warren Tute, John Costello, and Terry Hughes, D-Day (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1974), p. 190, for a description of German coastal defenses.
2fi The Germans were surprised. According to Assman, "Normandy," pp. 87-88, the Germans did not expect the attack because they did not think Allied naval forces had reached adequate strength, because the bad weather prevented routine reconnaissance flights the night of 5-6 June, and because Allied bombing had virtually wrecked the radar system along the coasts. Baldwin, "Normandy Invasion," p. 35, noted that the Germans had expected an Allied landing in the Fas de Calais area.
27 Prelanding naval gunfire at Omaha beach has been both praised and criticized by military writers. Those calling the amount of gunfire support inadequate include I. E. McMillian, "Gunfire Support Lessons Learned in World War II," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 74 (August 1948):982-83 (hereafter cited as McMillian, "Gunfire Support Lessons Learned"); Weller, "Amphibious Assault," pp. 58-59; Baldwin, Battles Lost and Won, p. 282; and R. D. Heini, "What the Army Should Know about Naval Gunfire," Combat Forces Journal 2 (October 1951):35. V. T. Boatwright, responsible for the gunfire support plans for the 11th Amphibious Force, took issue with Heinl in "What the Army Should Know about Naval Gunfire," Combat Forces Journal 2 (February 1952):30- 31. Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, pp. 121-25, called the shooting "excellent" but said the army had not allowed enough time for it. Kirk, Action Report, p. 11, said the prelanding bombardment plans were well conceived and effective.
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0-2 area judged the sea accurately and ran the LCTs closer in so that
the twenty-eight DD tanks could ground rather than swim. In the
eastern 0-1 sector, however, the tanks were launched from the LCTs at
about 5,000 yards, and one after another, twenty-seven of them foun
d e r e d . ^ 8 Hall's misgivings about the army plan to land these tanks
on the first wave proved true. DD tanks were successful in unopposed
or lightly opposed landings in calm seas, such as on the Utah beaches,
but were an unnecessary loss on most of the Omaha beaches. So much
for Bradley's secret weapon. Hall believed that DD tanks contributed
20 nothing to amphibious operations.
Following closely behind the LCTs with the DD tanks came
LCT(A)s, carrying tanks and tank dozers to help clear the obstacles.
Next, the first waves of assault troops in LCVPs and LCAs (Landing
Craft, Assault) some of which were blown slightly to the eastward,
touched shore at 0635. Demolition parties came hard on the heels
of the infantry wave. The Germans waited until the lead landing craft
neared the shore and then, with great accuracy, opened heavy fire with
artillery, mortars, machine guns, and small arms. The assault force
had expected static enemy troops and found instead the 352nd German
Armored Division. Losses to American tanks, soldiers, and demolition
28 Thompson, Spearhead of Invasion, p. 113, called this an act of "reckless irresponsibility" by the tank landing craft commander.
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 7, 101, 110, 142; supra, p. 197.
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30 men were heavy.
The demolition parties, each consisting of seven sailors and
five soldiers, had, perhaps, the toughest of all assignments. With
only twenty minutes to work before the tide started rising, the
sixteen demolition teams were to clear sixteen fifty-yard lanes all
the way to the beaches to create channels for the landing craft. The
heavy losses of men from the combination of devastating enemy fire
raking the beaches and the rapidly rising tide allowed the teams to
31 clear only six gaps all the way to shore and three partial gaps.
Because Hall's request to attack on the half-falling tide had been
32 denied, he had known that casualties would be high— they were forty-
one per cent:— and he had made a special effort to call the demolition
officers on board the Ancon before sailing. The admiral told them
that when Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke at his fiftieth Harvard
reunion, he said that he was proud to have fought at the bloody battle
of Fredericksburg and that many societies in the United States existed
because people were proud of their connections with soldiers and
sailors. Hall hoped his demolition squads would conduct themselves
in a courageous manner of which their descendants would be proud a
30 Hall's Action Report, pp. 7-8; Kirk's Oral History, p. 327. For a gory account of the horrors experienced by two companies of the 29th Division, see S. L. A. Marshall, "First Wave at Omaha Beach," Atlantic Monthly 206 (November 1960):67-72. 31 Hall's Action Report, pp. 8 , 98-99; NCDU Action Report,
p. 1 2 .
32 Supra, p. 201.
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century later. And brave they were. In one squad nearly all the
members were killed or wounded except a chief gunner's mate, who went
ahead and placed the Hagensen packs on the Element "C"s and exploded
fifty of those obstacles singlehandedly. This man received a Navy
Cross on Hall's recommendation. Hall always regretted that he did not
recommend the gunner's mate for a Medal of Honor.^3
Shortly after these initial waves, the Second Ranger Battalion
undertook the hazardous task of capturing the battery on Pointe du Hoe,
a cliff rising 117 feet above the shore about three miles west of the
Omaha beaches. Reportedly, a six-gun 155-mm. coast defense battery
with a range of 25,000 yards trained on both the Omaha and Utah sectors.
The formidable guns had to be neutralized. Lieutenant Colonel James E.
Rudder's Rangers landed shortly after 0700, and, covered by supporting
fire of the destroyers U.S.S. Satterlee and H.M.S. Talybont, scaled
the perpendicular cliff. But there were no guns at Pointe du Hoe.
The Germans had moved them inland before D-Day, and they were not
operational in their new location. Spotters located the guns, and
the battleship Texas knocked them out during the morning of D-Day.
The Ranger episode was somewhat bungled by Commander Dennis's assault
^^JLH Oral History, pp. 205, 208, 210; JLH interview, 11 May 1977; Fane and Moore, Naked Warriors, pp. 49-67, described the work of the UDTs on the Omaha beaches.
34 Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 196, 322; Ryan, Longest Day, pp. 236-39; Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, pp. 125-29; Ladd, Commandos and Rangers, pp. 188-91.
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group 0-4. Dennis got lost, took too long to reach his destination,
and released the Rangers too far from their landing spot, This
inefficiency, combined with the enemy opposition, prevented the Rangers
from sending a prearranged success signal so that other Rangers could
quickly follow. Not receiving the signal, the remaining Rangers
landed on another beach, thereby stranding those on the point. Hall
sent reinforcements to the point the next day, but it was not until
O C 8 June that the Rangers on Pointe du Hoe were relieved.
Throughout the morning of D-Day, wave after wave of landing
craft shuttled infantry troops, and DUKWs carried artillery toward the
Omaha beaches; but the unceasing enemy fire and the remaining obstacles
prevented the securing of any of the beaches.The inadequately
trained patrol craft and submarine chasers— the control vessels charged
with directing the landing craft from the line of departure to the
beaches— failed to avert a disorderly mass of craft aimlessly
floundering in the rough water. Hall quickly sent the deputy assault
group commanders to clear up the mess, and Captains M. H. Imlay and
W. D. Wright regrouped the landing craft at the line of departure and
37 sent them in again.
At 1100 the situation was still critical. Observers described
^^JLH interview, 14 May 1977.
36 Hall's Action Report, pp. 94-95. A wild account of D-Day on the Omaha beaches is in John Frayn Turner, Invasion '44; The First Full Story of D-Day in Normandy (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1959), pp. 125-35.
^^Hall’s Action Report, pp. 94-95.
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the beach scene as a chaotic collection of damaged craft, burning
vehicles, and dead and wounded men. Lacking defensive positions and
beach exits, the troops had made little headway. Colonel Benjamin B.
Talley, assistant chief of staff of the Fifth Corps, watched the
progress of the invasion from a DUKW several hundred yards off shore
and had sent several pessimistic messages to General Gerow, who came
on the bridge of the Ancon and expressed his displeasure at the
situation. Hall sent him to look at the more favorable naval reports
in the joint operations room. Shortly afterward. Colonel S. B. Mason,
First Division chief of staff, asked Hall to come to the operations
room to talk to Huebner, who was "even considering a withdrawal."
Responding that he was in command until he got the army established
ashore, the admiral told Mason that Huebner could not order a with-
38 drawal. Hall had no idea of quitting. Army commanders naturally
feel entirely helpless when they are afloat, and the command problem
had briefly threatened to surface again. In reassuring the generals.
Hall noted that "there was such power behind the assault it could not
fail."39
Soon more favorable reports trickled into the Ancon. Even
Talley noted that troops were advancing up the exit slopes off one of
3 JLH Oral History, pp. 199-201; JLH interviews, 19 April and 17 May 1977. Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, p. 142, noted that Hall "retained his customary calm and confidence" while reassuring the officers.
39 Schofield, Operation Neptune, p. 88.
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the beaches and added, "Thanks due destroyers." German troops began
to surrender; American soldiers made headway off the beaches; Colle-
ville fell at 1300; and opposition virtually ended in some sectors by
1340. At 1400 General W. M. Hoge, commanding general of the
Engineer Special Brigade, left the Ancon to set up his headquarters
ashore. Conditions continued to improve during the afternoon, and
by evening the forward line extended about one mile inland. Although
some artillery had come ashore, only one battery operated on D-Day.
At 1715 Huebner left the flagship to establish headquarters ashore,
and Gerow followed at 1945. The latter immediately sent a message to
Bradley; "Thank God for the United States Navy!"^^
The army could indeed be thankful for the navy, for throughout
D-Day it had provided almost the only gunfire support for the troops.
The disaster of the DD tanks, coupled with the fact that many of the
DUKWs loaded with tanks capsized in the rough waters, had left the
invading army vulnerable to German defensive fire. In addition to the
prelanding bombardment, the destroyers, a part of Rear Admiral C. F.
Bryant's bombardment group, delivered close supporting fire on
targets of opportunity and some call fire designated by the shore fire
control parties. Early on D-Day, while enemy fire kept the 116th and
16th Regiments pinned on the beaches. Hall ordered 8 American
destroyers and 3 British Hunts to close the beaches, sometimes to 800
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 9, 21, 23-25; Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, pp. 150-51.
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41 yards, and to fire on numerous enemy positions. In effect, the
destroyers operated as close mobile artillery during these tense hours.
The destroyers managed to knock out tanks, gun emplacements, machine
gun nests, trenches, and mortars and also unwittingly detonated many
carefully laid enemy minefields.Without the ships' support, the
casualties on the beach would have been much greater.
In one incident, a Fifth Corps observer noted an enemy
artillery observation post in a church steeple in Vierville and called
for fire against it. The commander of the destroyer Harding was
reluctant to fire against a church without Hall's permission, which he
gave. The church tower toppled on the first salvo. Hall believed that
the good Lord would consider the Germans the obvious transgressors
rather than American destroyers.
McMillian, "Development of Naval Gunfire Support," p. 11, asserted that the most novel feature of supporting fire at Normandy was the use of the new "close-in" tactic— which had, in fact, been used at both Sicily and Salerno,
42 E.g., Action Reports of U.S.S. Emmons, serial 003 of 22 June 1944; U.S.S. Doyle, no serial, n.d.; U.S.S. McCook, serial 007 of 13 July 1944; U.S.S. Frankford, serial 047 of 24 June 1944; U.S.S. Carmick, serial 077 of 1 July 1944; and U.S.S. Thompson, serial 021 of 26 June 1944, OA, NHD.
^^Hall's Action Report, p. 103. Kirk, Action Report, p. 12, labeled post H-Hour supporting fire as "over-cautious," an assessment which Hall, in an interview, 17 May 1977, called "ridiculous." Subse quent writers have been virtually unanimous in praising the value of naval gunfire in maintaining the precarious toehold on Omaha beach, e.g., Baldwin, Battles Lost and Won, p. 282; Heinl, "Naval Gunfire," p. 34; Weller, "Amphibious Assault," p. 59; Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, pp. 147-48; Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, p. 302.
A A JLH interview, 17 May 1977; U.S.S. Harding Action Report, p. 7, serial 003 of 20 June 1944, OA, NHD; George M. Elsey, "Naval Aspects of
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During the difficult period between H-Hour and the establish
ment of shore fire control parties, close supporting fire must avoid
hitting the troops on the beaches, and the use of SCR 609 (voice)
circuits directly to the ships greatly facilitated accurate firing.
Spotter planes manned by men from the Royal Air Force and the Army
Air Forces, were effective on only forty-two per cent of their missions,
and no navy cruiser spotting planes took part in the assault. Until
about 1300 when the situation on the beaches improved and regular shore
fire control began to function, extraordinary methods of spotting were
used. In one instance, a naval gunfire liaison officer set up his
radio off shore on his LCV(P), which had been struck by fire in two
landing attempts, and spotted the gunfire from that risky position.
Since this was successful, Hall thought that in future operations
spotters stationed off shore in small craft could call close supporting
and counterbattery fire,^^ Another method of spotting was observation
by the destroyers of the location of hits by army tanks; the roving
fire support ships would then take the marked site under fire.^^
Although naval gunfire performed admirably, destroyer com
manders were virtually unanimous in their complaints about poor
communications with the shore fire control parties throughout D-Day.
Normandy in Retrospect," in The Eisenhower Foundation, D-Day : The Normandy Invasion in Retrospect (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1971), p. 186.
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 103-06; Kirk's Action Report, p. 10.
^^Carmick Action Report, p. 7.
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Either contact was made and lost or was almost non-existent.^^
The larger battleships and cruisers did not provide close
support during these early hours but rather prevented enemy troops
from approaching the beaches. Battleships Texas and Arkansas fired
successfully at points inland, and cruisers H.M.S. Glasgow and the
French Montcalm and George Leygues hammered at targets picked out by
planes. Occasionally an inexperienced spotter requested the wrong
kind of fire; in one case a spotter called for battleship main battery
fire against a machine gun nest!^^
The smaller gunfire support craft had not been adequately
trained because of their late arrival in the theater. Nevertheless,
they gamely contributed to the D-Day support of the assault forces.
The LCT(R)s successfully fired at enemy ground forces, but the LCFs
(Landing Craft, Flak), slated for anti-aircraft fire, were not very
useful. The LCG(L)s were partially effective as shallow draft
gunboats early in the landings. The rocket-firing LCS(S)s often
launched their rockets too far off shore to cause much destruction.
Another method of providing fire support— allowing the army to fire
105-mm. howitzers from the unstable LCTs— was not effective.
^E.g., Action Reports of Thompson, p. 10; Carmick, p. 7; Frank ford, p. 2; McCook, p. 2; Emmons, p. 3. Hall, Action Report, pp. 103- 04, maintained that SFCPs operated normally by 1300 on D-Day.
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 102, 106; Action Reports, U.S.S. Texas, serial 002 of 23 June 1944; U.S.S. Arkansas, serial 0085 of 26 June 1944; H.M.S. Glasgow, serial 1144/016B of 22 June 1944, OA, NHD,
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 107, 110.
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Various observers attested to the efficacy of naval gunfire
support. Huebner’s chief of staff, Colonel Mason, inspected the Omaha
beaches on 6 July to study German defensive methodology. With Huebner's
concurrence. Mason wrote: “
That was undoubtedly a strong defensive position. Manned as it was it should have been impregnable. But there was one element of the attack which they could not parry. . . . I am now firmly convinced that our supporting Naval fires got us in; that without that gun fire we positively would not have crossed those beaches.
Mason noted that at Oran the army had not needed fire support but that
at Gela the army needed and received support to keep it on the beach.
Normandy was different in that "we were met on the beach. I looked
over the destruction of German pillboxes, fortified houses and gun
positions, and in all cases it was apparent that Naval guns had worked
on them."3^ Once again, as at Sicily and Salerno, naval gunfire
support proved to be decisive in ensuring the success of the ground
troops.
Even the German army publication "Militarische Korrespondenz"
noted on 16 June that the Allied navy's gunnery proved to be a major
trump card for the invading armies because of its accuracy, sustained
fire power, and mobility. "Time and again they [warships and cruisers]
put an umbrella of fire over the defenders at the focal points of the
Col. S. B. Mason to JLH, 8 July 1944, Correspondence: 1944 file, JLH Papers. Cf., Weller, "Salvo— Splash!", p. 841, which pointed to a lack of integration of gunfire and ship-to-shore move ment at Omaha.
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fighting. It is no exaggeration to say that the cooperation of the
heavy naval guns played a decisive part in enabling the Allies to
establish a bridgehead in N o r m a n d y . "^1
Naval gunfire alone had the responsibility of destroying and
neutralizing the enemy coastal defenses in the early phases of the
assault. Although Army Air Forces Colonel Tindall was on board the
Ancon, he had to communicate with Leigh-Mallory’s headquarters in
Britain before any planes could be flown to assist in bombing a
particular target. Since Hall had no direct control over air support,
he could not even order a plane to make smoke to protect the shipping.
As in the Mediterranean, this lack of control by the assault force
commander of all elements in the attack hampered the speedy establish
ment and support of the beachhead. The air forces had not accepted
the principle that the attack force commander, responsible for the
success or failure of an amphibious assault, must be able to direct
all of his weaponry. Hall felt that not having such control was like
a boxer trying to fight without his right hand. Since Hall was not
able to communicate directly with the aircraft or to direct them to
zero in on known targets, he did not consider the air force as very
helpful in the establishment of the beachhead. In fact, there was no
evidence, such as bomb craters, that air force planes had dropped
3^Stark to JLH, 5 July 1944, enclosing German Army publication in Weekly Intelligence Report No. 225, 30 June 1944, Correspondence: 1944 file, JLH Papers.
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bombs within three miles of Hall’s beaches,
In contrast to the air bombardment, air cover was excellent
during the whole period of landing and follow-up; no Luftwaffe planes
attacked Hall's force during the approach or the assault. Although
Luftwaffe planes had unexpectedly failed to appear throughout D-Day,
at 2319 an enemy plane, undetected by radar, flew in low over the
Ancon and fired two bursts. During the next few minutes more aircraft
bombed the transport area, causing no damage, and ships' gunners shot
down three planes. Gunners in the Ancon bagged one plane off her port
beam. Another raid resulted in three planes crashing on the beach
53 shortly before 0300 on 7 June. Minor raids continued during the next
few weeks, with little damage to Hall's shipping. Allied planes
effectively deterred heavy enemy air attacks.
During the afternoon of D-Day, conditions improved rapidly
on the beaches, and landing craft and ships carrying men and equip
ment, delayed off shore because of enemy action and obstacles, began
to reach the landing areas and to unload expeditiously. At 1430
Commodore Edgar's follow-up Force "B," embarking General Gerhardt and
the remaining units of the First and Twenty-ninth Divisions, the
Fifth Corps, and engineer special units, arrived in the assault area.
52 Hall's Action Report, p. Ill, JLH Oral History, pp. 173, 205-7. In contrast, Kirk, Action Report, p. 9, stressed the excellent coordination between surface and air forces.
53 Hall's Action Report, pp. 10, 25: Ancon Action Report, p. 1.
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Two hours later Edgar’s ships began to unload. All transports of
Hall’s assault force had completed unloading and left the area shortly
after 1800, thus removing them from the danger of enemy air attack.
Loading the transports with only troops and a limited number of
vehicles enabled Hall to get the big ships out of the attack area
within twelve hours of H-Hour— a vast improvement over his Mediter
ranean experiences. With D-Day nearly over, Hall’s force had carried
out its task of landing and supporting the ground forces on the Omaha
beaches. Some days after Gerhardt went ashore, he wrote Hall, com
mending his command for the landings at Omaha. He noted the exemplary
conduct of naval officers and bluejackets and especially praised the
crews that handled the obstacles and landed under fire.^^
By the end of D-Day, Huebner’s First Division had reached the
Colleville-Asnières line, although Fifth Corps elements did not reach
their D-Day objective until 8 June, In the other American assault
area. Moon's Force "U" had landed Collins's Seventh Corps on the Utah
beaches with scant opposition, and Collins's troops had sped inland and
reached their objective of the Carentan and Ste. Mere-Eglise highway.
The British sector spread east of the Omaha beach from Port-en-Bessin
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 9, 23-24.
3^Maj. Gen. C. H. Gerhardt to JLH, 20 June 1944, Correspondence: 1944 file, JLH Papers.
^^Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, pp. 153, 189-90; Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 328-29; Moon's Action Report, p. 7; JLH interview, 17 May 1977.
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to Ouistreham. Admiral Vian, whom Hall considered a first-rate
fighting man, conducted the Eastern Naval Task Force's landing of
three divisions of the British Second Army, which moved inland more
slowly than expected. Caen, the target of their assault, was heavily
defended and did not fall until 9 July.^^ Nevertheless, Allied
forces had established their beachheads and would not be pushed back
CO into the sea.
The Buildup
On 7 June, the buildup phase of Operation Neptune started, and
Hall's force began unloading men and supplies from the personnel
buildup convoys. The prolonged buildup period— landing vehicles,
stores, and troops across open beaches for many weeks— was a new
feature in amphibious operations in Europe. Although hoping to capture
the major port of Cherbourg soon after D-Day, army commanders required
vast supplementary shipments of troops and equipment as rapidly as
possible, and the navy had to deliver the necessary tools of war over
open beaches until Cherbourg fell into Allied hands on 29 June. On
8 June, the ferry service began operating, and another of Hall's
Roskill, The Offensive, Part II, pp. 53, 122; Schofield, Opera tion Neptune, pp. 89-102. For a popular account of British military accomplishments by a British historian, see Alexander McKee, Last Round against Rommel: Battle of the Normandy Bridgehead (New York: New American Library, 1964).
58 A brief, generalized story of Allied achievements on D-Day is Allan A. Michie, The Invasion of Europe: The Story Behind D-Day (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1964), pp. 158-72. Another enthusiastic account is "Amphibs Hit France," All Hands (July 1944):6-11, 52.
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assigned tasks was done. Fortunately, his flagship, the Ancon, ably
commanded by Captain M. S. Pearson, was an amphibious command ship
rather than a transport such as the Samuel Chase, and Hall could
remain in the assault area to supervise the buildup on the Omaha
beaches.
The first buildup convoy, consisting of four transports,
arrived on 7 June, and unloading of the convoy, as well as the last
groups of Hall's force, continued until early evening. Unloading on
the beaches was behind schedule because of the obstacles, which the
demolition squads slowly but effectively continued to clear, the
spasmodic enemy gunfire on the beaches, the clutter and wreckage from
the previous day, and the lack of organizational training of the shore
parties and beach battalions. To help with beach clearing, some
units of the salvage groups arrived in the Omaha area with the assault
force, and other units quickly followed. Twelve LCMs, each with a
bulldozer, a motor driven pump, tow lines, repair equipment, and
salvage specialists, aided in clearing the beaches and waters and in
repairing damaged vessels. By 9 June the salvage organization
operated smoothly, and six days later it had cleared eighty-five
59 per cent of the obstacles and debris on the beaches.
By the end of 9 June, Force "0" had put ashore a total of
59. Hall's Action Report, pp. 10, 120; "U.S. Naval Bases," pp. 71-76.
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73,667 troops, 8,538 vehicles, and 4,581 tons of stores.The entire
situation looked promising enough so that Hall could respond with
assurance when a newscaster asked his opinion of the invasion. The
admiral replied that, although the landing forces had met stiff
resistance, with such great power they were here to stay. "I'm
confident that soldiers that can fight like those that I took into
Sicily and Salerno and France will get to Berlin.
Complicating the unloading process was the First Army's demand
to empty the ships by priorities based on the cargo. But the sailing
orders for convoys and the ships' manifests, scheduled to be dispatched
to army commanders, did not arrive and later turned up in the British
assault area because army authorities at Portsmouth had addressed them
incorrectly. Without the manifests, the army had no way of knowing
if incoming ships contained priority materiel and asked the far shore
group commander. Captain Chauncey Camp, to board cargo ships and to
get a copy of the manifests so that the army could determine whether
or not the cargo was priority rated. Such an impossible task would
have delayed unloading by at least a day. After Hall repeatedly
requested the army to lift the priorities so that he could quickly
^^Figures from Commander Assault Force "0," Narrative of Attack on Vierville-Colleville Area, Coast of Normandy, with enclosure: Record of Unloading, serial 00807 of 9 July 1944, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Record of Unloading).
^^George Hicks interview with Adm. Hall, Film No. Pro 7, recorded 9 June 1944, OA, NHD.
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unload the convoys as they arrived, Bradley sent his chief of staff
to grant approval. The two-day backlog waiting for unloading was
62 cleared by 9 June.
To help unravel the snarls on the beaches, Hall appointed
Captain Lorenzo S. Sabin, who commanded the gunfire support craft, to
replace Camp temporarily as naval officer in charge (NOIC) at Omaha
on 10 June and instructed him to get the ships unloaded. Camp was
still trying to get his men and equipment off the ships so he could
get his organization operating.In Operation Neptune, there were
no pileups on the beaches because of inefficient army shore parties.
General Hoge planned and established his engineer special brigades
to move the supplies to inland dumps quickly.
In the midst of the initial confusion of trying to get the
unloading system operating smoothly, Bradley complained to Hall of a
serious shortage of artillery ammunition. Hall met with Bradley and
Kirk on the Omaha beach on 8 June and told Bradley that if the army
had planned for enough ammunition, it was there somewhere, because no
ships with ammunition had been sunk. Hall said that the army check-in
system had probably gone awry because so many members of the shore
parties had been killed or injured, and that it was not a naval
^^Hall's Action Report, pp, 12-14, 115-116.
^^ibid., pp. 12-13, 114. In his Oral History, pp. 334-35, Kirk agreed that Camp was incompetent as beachmaster.
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responsibility to know where army dumps were located,Rather than
take the navy’s part in the heated exchange on the beach, Kirk
apparently chided Hall for not knowing the whereabouts of the army
s u p p l i e s . Bradley’s men did find their ammunition.
On 12 June Eisenhower, accompanied by Joint Chiefs King,
Marshall, and Arnold, toured the Normandy beaches and returned for a
Combined Chiefs of Staff meeting in London. During King's stay in
Britain, Stark entertained him and Admirals Wilkes and Flannigan, of
Stark's staff, at dinner. Wilkes and Flannigan, visiting the Ancon
a few days later, told Hall that King had heard of the encounter with
Bradley and Kirk and, at the dinner, expressed his displeasure that
Kirk had not been able to give Bradley a satisfactory explanation for
the ammunition shortage. Hall had to do it. King said that he
intended to recall Kirk to Britain and give him thirty days to write
his action report,but Kirk remained at Normandy until 3 July.
Throughout the unloading of the assault and follow-up convoys
64 JLH Oral History, pp. 202-3; JLH interview, 17 May 1977.
^^Baldwin's Oral History, pp. 411-12. Baldwin was on Kirk's flagship, tagged along to the beach, and inadvertently overheard the angry dispute. Bradley, Soldier's Story, does not mention this incident.
^^Butcher, My Three Years, p. 578; JLH interview, 19 May 1977; JLH Oral History, p. 238. In his Oral History, pp. 350-56, Kirk implied that his rapid exit from Britain was caused by Ramsay's jealousy of American naval superiority and by Kirk's failure to involve the British in the bombardment of Cherbourg.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 4 4
the landing craft and ships executed a Herculean task,^^ The LSTs
turned in their usual first-rate performance. Loading both men and
vehicles on the docks in Britain, the LSTs initially had to unload at
Omaha onto various ferry craft, which took the cargo and troops to
the beaches. When unloading fell behind schedule. Hall ordered the
LSTs, on their turn-around trips, to run directly on shore and
discharge without the use of pontoon causeways, floating piers, or
ferry craft. Ramsay had prohibited this practice on the first waves
unless an emergency developed because he was afraid of damage to the
ships.Although Hall had tried the method in the Mediterranean when
tides and beaches permitted, one of the most important lessons learned
at Omaha was that the LSTs could readily be run onto a firm beach
with a large tidal range by beaching from one and one-half to two
hours after high tide, unloading their cargo, and floating out on the
next tide. Hall used this "drying out" process on more than 200 LSTs
with no adverse effects. Even after the Mulberry became functional.
Hall still found the drying out of LSTs a more practical method of
A brief description of tenders for the smaller craft off Normandy is Homer Bast, "Amphibious Mother Ship," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 74 (March 1948): 333-37.
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 11, 14; JLH Oral History, p. 228. Cunningham, Sailor's Odyssey, p. 607, gave Ramsay credit for the "wise decision" to beach the LSTs; and Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, p. 187, stated Vian was drying out the LSTs on 7 June. Victor Boatwright, letter to author, 5 September 1977, maintained that Hall originated and pushed the idea of drying out the LSTs.
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delivering the men and supplies ashore.
LCT(5)s and LCT( 6 )s, used at first to unload the LSTs but
freed from this chore by LSTs discharging directly on shore or on the
Mulberry, unloaded the military transports and coasters. The LCT(5),
the better of the two, could side load from an LST in weather conditions
unsuitable for the LCT( 6 ) and, because of its high stern, could unload
during a surf that would have swamped the LCT( 6 ). Hall thought the
navy should discontinue the use of the LCT(6 ) in favor of the L C T (5).
The smaller LCTs (3s and 4s) also responded to the drying-out process
on the beach, thus helping to free the larger LCTs for other unloading
assignments.^^ While being used for launch pads for the DD tanks, the
slow LCTs became prime targets for enemy fire on D-Day.
Again operating effectively as personnel carriers, the LCI(L)s
loaded directly from docks in Britain but, because of the gradual
beach gradients, had to transfer their cargo to LCVPs or LCMs on the
far shore. After debarking their first load of troops, the LCI(L)s
assisted in unloading the transports. Some LCI(L)s, equipped with
extra communications gear, served as mobile and highly satisfactory
headquarters ships for subordinate commanders. Hall also believed that
the LCI(L)s would make better control vessels than the PCs and SCs.^^
69 Hall's Action Report, pp. 14, 117; Kirk's Action Report, annex C, p. 7
70 Hall's Action Report, pp. 116-18, 120.
71 ^^Ibid., pp. 92, 95-96, 113, 118; Kirk's Action Report, annex C, p. 7.
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Hall used fewer LCMs in this operation because these craft were
not as serviceable as the LCTs. They were better for transporting
troops rather than vehicles or stores and also served as salvage
vessels. Two other types of craft did not perform well. The LCC
(Landing Craft, Control) was a failure because of poor functional
design, and the inefficient handling of the LCS(S)s by their crews
72 made these small vessels almost useless.
The DUKW, the proven amphibian from the Mediterranean, again
turned in a good performance. At the insistence of the shore party
commander. General Hoge, who wanted to avoid the use of added equipment
and men necessary in shifting bulk cargo from ships to landing craft
and then ashore. Hall's force utilized the DUKW extensively. The
swimming truck was ideal for unloading small ships such as coasters
but was too small for the big boom loads of large Liberty or transport
ships. A lighter, an LCT, or a Rhino ferry with cranes to assist in
unloading were more satisfactory in handling large cargoes. In addi
tion, the DUKW could not operate on beaches with steep gradients or
fine gravel. The DUKW did prove extremely useful after the big storm
of 19-21 June, which damaged or destroyed many of the small ferry
craft. After the storm, the DUKWs, sheltered on shore, began unloading
73 immediately.
72 Hall's Action Report, pp. 118-19; Kirk's Action Report, p. 13;
annex C, pp. 6 - 8 .
73 Hall's Action Report, p. 118.
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New to the landing force in this invasion, the Rhino ferries
initially unloaded the LSTs, then the military transports, Able to
carry large loads--two emptied an LST^rand to discharge cargo and
vehicles on beaches of varying gradients, the huge motorized pontoons
greatly augmented the assault force's unloading speed and ability.
Another advantage offered by the Rhino ferries was that their component
pontoon parts could be carried to the area and then assembled. The
big barges had a major shortcoming: their motors lacked adequate
74 p o w er .
Since there was insufficient towing equipment, the force did
not use the lighters (dumb barges) to their full capacities. Their
potential as a means of transporting stores and vehicles was vast: a
1,500-ton lighter could carry two days of supplies for an infantry
division. The assault force towed six lighters loaded with ammunition
and landed them during the afternoon of D-Day, giving the army a
reserve supply of ammunition should unloading get delayed.
As in the Mediterranean, Hall's force rail-loaded LCVPs and
LCAs whenever possible. This method, far more efficient in the
debarkation process than net loading, sped the unloading of the big
transports. One LSI tried sending men from the ship through canvas
chutes to landing boats (the helter-skelter method). Although the
^^Ibid., p. 119; Karig et al., "Rhinos and Mulberries," p. 1419; Kirk's Action Report, annex C, p. 20.
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 119-20.
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participants were not enthusiastic about this quick means of getting
troops from the transport to the landing craft, Hall felt that more
experimentation was necessary before rejecting helter-skelter.^^
Hall's force had more difficulties with control vessels than
with landing craft, primarily because of insufficient training.
Although Hall had tried since his arrival in Britain to obtain more
adequate patrol/escort craft than the British motor launches for the
assault force, the better equipped American PCs and SCs did not
arrive in the theater until very late. After the PCs did reach
Britain, Admiral Wilkes had used them extensively to escort other
craft between ports, and they participated in a few special drills
and one large-scale exercise; but their crews did not receive enough
training. The SCs, with neither instruction nor training, reported
while the assault force was loading for the Normandy attack, so assault
group commanders could only give them written orders and some last-
minute oral instruction. Consequently, when the D-Day combination of
enemy fire, obstacles, and choppy seas slowed the scheduled beaching
of landing craft, succeeding boat waves bunched with earlier waves
near the line of departure. The inadequately trained crews were not
able to maintain order and a steady flow of men and equipment to the
beaches until the deputy assault group commanders took charge of
reorganizing the waves,
^^Ibid., p. 92.
^^Ibid., pp. 94-95; Kirk's Action Report, annex L, p. 1, is uncritical of the performance of these craft.
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The boat crews manning all the landing craft and ships worked
under extremely difficult conditions, and, for the most part, the
crews that were either experienced or adequately trained handled
their tasks with courage and gallantry. Only the men on the PCs and
SCs turned in substandard performances, and this was because of poor
preparation and the inexperience and inadequate training of their
78 commanding officers.
As the landing craft and vessels carried their human and
material cargoes to the Omaha beaches, still another method to
accelerate unloading appeared off shore. Mulberry-A, the artificial
port designed by the British, was under construction. Surveyors had
begun determining the locations for the Mulberry and Gooseberry
projects on 7 June, and the following day the old ships for Gooseberry
were sunk in position to form a breakwater. The blasting charges
detonated to sink the blockships caused some confusion ashore, how
ever; and reports came in that heavy enemy fire was damaging American
vessels near the beaches. The Gooseberry was completed by 10 June.
Meanwhile, Captain A. Dayton Clark's force towed the gigantic concrete
caissons that formed Mulberry-A and rapidly constructed the port. By
16 June, LCTs began using one of the sunken causeways for unloading,
and two days later several LSTs discharged their vehicles on the whale
78 JLH interview, 17 May 1977.
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79 (pier). The potential usefulness of Mulberry-A would soon vanish.
By 18 June, Hall's force had the unloading of troops and
supplies under firm control. Enemy air and naval attacks on the
shipping had been sporadic and inflicted only slight damage or loss.
The total number of men put ashore had increased from 18,772 at noon
on D-Day to 78,668 on 9 June to 191,629 on 18 June. Eor the same
dates, cumulative quantities of vehicles landed were 1,033, then
8,538, then 26,237; and supplies jumped from 4,581 tons on 9 June to
on 66,977 tons on 18 June.
In addition to this over-the-beach unloading of men and
materiel. Hall's command began to carry out another of its initial
assignments: to coordinate the location and construction of port
facilities and to develop the existing small ports in the Carentan
estuary. By 13 June the force started to sweep the approaches to the
estuary and survey the ports of Grandcamp and Isigny, and the army
began removing the channel block at Isigny, The ports were operating
by 24 June. Hall's men also surveyed Carentan and started to develop
it as a site for'unloading coasters and landing barges.
Hall's Action Report, pp. 11, 12, 15; Karig et al., "Rhinos and Mulberries," pp. 1419^21. A brief summary of the Mulberry opera tion is "Harbors Floated to France," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 70 (November 1944):1417-19; and a pictorial record is in "Mulberries: Portable Ports Helped Free France," All Hands (December 1944):10-11.
^^Record of Unloading; Hall’s Action Report, pp. 24, 32, 52.
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 2, 14.
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In spite of the complaints of the destroyer commanders, Hall
felt that the communications systems functioned well during the
assault and buildup phases. Hall’s communications officer, Captain
R. N. Mailing, and his staff devised the communication plan for the
large and diverse assault force, but constant changes by higher
echelons created confusion and caused many last-minute revisions in
force plans.
The force used four primary means of communication: visual,
dispatch boats, radio telegraph, and radio telephone. Their speed
made the visual signals preferable. The British daylight signaling
lantern, installed in the Ancon before the operation, proved effective,
and Hall believed the lanterns should be placed in all amphibious
flagships.
After radio silence was lifted, the ships relied heavily on
FM radio telephones. A combination of SCR-608 radio telephones in
fire support ships and SCR-609 portables used by shore fire control
parties, once they were established, produced excellent gunfire support
communications. FM radio telephones enabled beachmasters to establish
rapid contact with the ships, but, because of continuing enemy opposi
tion, only two beachmasters had set up ship-to-shore radio telegraph
channels by the end of D-Day. The radio teletype network, heavily
overloaded during the period of radio silence, worked efficiently
QO Ibid., pp. 132, 135.
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later.
Another means of relaying signal messages, the dispatch boat
service, failed because of the type of boats used. Hall's force had
nine R,A,F, seaplane tenders, one of which sank before departure from
Britain. The remainder developed serious mechanical problems by the
end of D-Day, and seven of the boats succumbed to the great storm of
19-21 June. Hall then used eighty-six-foot U.S. Coast Guard boats,
which provided reliable dispatch boat service.
Hall felt that the best method of handling large numbers of
small landing craft was by oral directions given through loudspeakers.
The Ancon had low powered portable speakers that were adequate, but
all amphibious and assault group flagships and control vessels needed
85 high powered loudspeakers.
Some difficulties developed with communications, however,
because separate radio telephone circuits had not been assigned to
the combat fire fighting and salvage unit and because postassault
merchant shipping had to rely on either visual or messenger communica
tions, but technicians quickly overcame these problems. More trouble
arose in establishing comprehensive communications with the beach
during the buildup phase. By 18 June, the naval officer in charge at
Omaha beach had not been able to set up efficient communications
because there was no appropriate housing for the equipment. In
B^Ibid., pp. 132t 33. ®^Ibid., p. 136. ®^Ibid.
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addition, a lack of coordination of the names of the beaches, combat
landing teams, boat waves, and control vessels created some problems
that needed to be corrected in subsequent operations. These matters
were more of an irritation than a handicap; communications were
86 generally first-rate.
Several useful innovations during the Normandy operation
improved the communications system. In the Ancon, Hall used three
naval communications watch officers (C.W.O.s) at all times, stationing
them with the army C.W.O.s in the communications office, and with
the navy operations officer in the joint operations room. This new
departure enabled these trained officers to solve most difficulties
that arose in communications. Additionally, the use of three LSTs
equipped as fighter direction tenders and manned by R.A.F. radar
experts was an outstanding development. These ships provided quick
and accurate information to all headquarters ships on the altitude
87 and plots of hostile and unidentified aircraft.
The Ancon, her vast number of circuits exceeding even many
shore communications centers, handled a volume of traffic greater than
Hall had ever previously experienced. As well as being the assault
force flagship, the Ancon served as headquarters for the commanding
generals of the Fifth Corps, the First Division, and the Engineer
Special Brigade. Even with so many commands aboard, there were few
GGlbid., pp. 132, 134. ®^Ibid, pp. 127, 135, 138.
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problems and delays caused by overloaded or inadequate circuitry. In
comparison to the North African and Mediterranean landings, the
communications for Normandy showed a tremendous improvement.®®
Throughout this buildup phase, naval warships continued to
deliver supporting fire requested by the army. On 13 June, Bradley,
anticipating a strong counterattack between Carentan and Isigny,
asked Kirk to postpone sending the battleships back to Britain because
on the army still needed naval gunfire support. By 18 June, however,
the Allied invasion of France was moving successfully inland. The
British forces held the line they had achieved on 7 June in order to
absorb the brunt of the German counterattack and to allow American
ground troops to advance toward Cherbourg, and Bradley's First Army
moved toward sealing off the Cotentin peninsula and prepared for the
90 onslaught against Cherbourg.
But then disaster struck, not from the German defenders but
from "The Storm." During the night of 18-19 June, a northeast wind
began to rise and increased during the day to twenty-two knots,
gusting to thirty-two. Driving rain pelted the beaches and the ships,
and the seas built up to eight or nine feet. Continuing for three
^^Ibid., pp. 127, 129, 140; JLH interview, 20 May 1977.
89 Handwritten letter, Bradley to Kirk, n.d., Kirk Papers, series III, (b), 46. Envelope was dated 13 June and indicated that Kirk took immediate action.
90 Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, pp. 189-90.
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days, the blow smashed landing craft on the beaches and against the
concrete caissons, made most of the Rhino ferries inoperative, and
totally wrecked the Mulberry-A. As Hall had predicted, the artificial
port could not withstand a severe storm, and debris from the project
added to the litter in the Omaha area. Although most unloading came
to a halt during the storm. Hall's force did manage to send in small
quantities of men, vehicles, and stores throughout the days of the
1,1 91 blow.
After the storm subsided on 22 June, the Omaha beach lay
heaped with wreckage and debris from landing craft (fifteen LCMs and
seventy-five LCVPs were lost), coasters, pontoons, and parts of the
Mulberry-A. Only a dozen LCTs and one Rhino ferry were operational.
The DUKWs, however, securely sheltered ashore, came through relatively
unscathed. Working desperately to bolster the dwindling reserves of
supplies and ammunition. Hall’s sailors unloaded by every means
available around the clock. Hall tried another innovation in order
to get ammunition ashore: he ran five coasters on the beach to dry out
and to unload directly into trucks. This technique had never been
tried before; coasters were not designed for drying-out, but they
were not damaged by the process. DUKWs unloaded other coasters sent
in close to the beach while salvage crews cleared the beaches and
Ibid., pp. 176-79; Hall’s Action Report, pp. 15-16, 54, 56, 90. Record of Unloading shows that there was no cessation of unloading although it was markedly reduced. Stanford, Force Mulberry, pp. 177-93, described the effects of the storm on Mulberry-A.
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repaired damaged craft. By 24 June, the force broke all its former
92 records for unloading stores, and this pace continued unabated.
As the cleanup and unloading continued, Kirk questioned Hall
93 about the feasibility of rebuilding the destroyed Mulberry-A.
Although salvage expert Captain Edward Ellsberg, sent to Omaha beach
to assess the damage to the artificial harbor, felt the Mulberry
could be restored, Commodore W. A. Sullivan, commanding the salvage
group, vetoed the idea.^^ Hall, always lukewarm to the Mulberry
concept, considered it a complete failure; no useful purpose would
be served by rebuilding it. Kirk went along with Hall's views.
During this time Hall ran into a personal problem. He went to
see Kirk on board the Augusta, and, as Hall embarked in his boat to
return to his flagship, he hit his heel on a grappling hook. The hook
penetrated his shoe and went into his heel, and he was forced to stay
in bed for several days. Later, Kirk jokingly signaled that Hall
should receive the Purple Heart for his combat wound
92 Hall's Action Report, pp. 17, 75, 119; JLH Oral History, pp. 234-35.
93 Kirk to Hall, 22 June 1944, Kirk Papers, series III, (b), 23.
94 Mulberry supporters such as Edward Ellsberg, The Far Shore (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1960), pp. 337-41; Stanford, Force Mulberry, p. 134; and more recently Hartcup, Code Name Mulberry, pp. 128-29, criticized the naval command afloat for rejecting the idea.
95 Kirk's Action Report, p. 13; annex C, p. 3.
^^JLH interview, 20 May 1977.
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While Hall nursed his injury and his force coped with unloading,
Ramsay ordered Hall to devise an operation plan to land General George
Patton's Third Army on the north coast of the Brittany peninsula if the
planned Allied breakthrough at Avranches failed, Patton's army had
been scheduled to become activated after the breakthrough, slated for
26 June, but the Allied drive to the base of the Brittany peninsula had
slowed. Patton had not forwarded any plans, so Hall sent von Heimburg,
his chief of staff, and Little, his plans officer, to Patton's head
quarters in Britain with instructions not to come back to the Ancon
without at least an outline of Patton's scheme of maneuver. After
several days, the two officers returned empty-handed but with a
message to the admiral from Patton: "Tell that s.o.b. to stop worrying.
I'll have columns off Brest, St. Nazaire, and Lorient within forty-
eight hours." He was right, and Hall did not need a naval assault
plan. Patton arrived in France on 6 July, but the Third Army did not
become operational until 1 August. Patton then swept through France.
Hall considered Patton to be the greatest master of quick tactical
movement ashore that World War II produced and to be an outstanding
97 battlefield commander.
After his force got on with unloading and clearing the wreckage
97 JLH interview, 17 May 1977; JLH Oral History, pp. 181-82, 184; Blumenson, Patton Papers, pp. 473, 494. H. Essame, Patton: A Study in Command (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974), pp. 258-59, voiced a similar assessment, calling Patton the greatest "exponent of armoured warfare produced by the Allies," and comparing him with great com manders such as Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and Rommel.
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from the great storm. Hall continued to direct the ships and craft
delivering the goods to support the armies. By 27 June, Force "0" had
98 landed 273,366 men, 40,307 vehicles, and 126,479 tons of stores.
The combined Allied buildup on the continent steadily increased; and,
by 1 September, shipments to the far shore totalled 2,093,855 men,
440,199 vehicles, and 2,480,352 tons of stores— landed over the open
99 beaches in the Bay of the Seine. Yet a victorious assault produces
its casualties, and at Normandy Hall's force sustained a total of 624
men dead, wounded, or missing.
With the Allied lodgement in France secure. Admiral Wilkes
replaced Moon as commander of Force "U" on 25 June and relieved Hall
two days later. When Wilkes assumed command of the U.S. naval forces
in the assault area. Hall returned to Britain.
For Hall, the Normandy invasion demonstrated that American
amphibious tactics and techniques had acquired a refinement and polish
that had grown from the first experimental landing at Casablanca and
from the learning processes at Sicily and Salerno. Assault commanders
avoided many earlier problems and mistakes. The loading of ships and
transports proceeded without the snarls experienced in earlier
operations, mainly because the army attempted to send only men and a
limited number of vehicles in the assault convoy. Command difficulties
98j Record of Unloading. ^^"U,S. Naval Bases," p. 50. 100. ^Hall's Action Report, pp. 143, 145.
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did not surface,
The assault itself, carried out in the early morning hours in
contrast to Hall's three previous night landings, differed in the size
of the naval forces— about 5,000 ships and craft for the whole Allied
fleet— and the number of troops put ashore. The scope and magnitude
were far greater than any previous amphibious invasion. Despite the
size of the assault force, communications personnel and equipment
handled the large volume of signals quickly and accurately. Sea and
surf conditions contrasted markedly with those at Sicily and Salerno
although invading forces had had a difficult time with a storm and
high seas off Casablanca. Initial enemy defensive forces were also
different: at Casablanca the Allies encountered the French, who
quickly surrendered, at Sicily the lackadaisical Italians, and at
both Sicily and Salerno the tough but numerically insufficient Cermans.
Normandy, the gateway to Hitler's European fortress, was guarded by
natural and man-made coastal defenses and crack Cerman troops. One
continuing shortcoming was that the assault force commanders still did
not have operational command of air support during the assault.
The buildup phase, requiring the continued presence of the
assault force near the combat area, pushed an unprecedented amount of
men and supplies over open beaches. Hall's use of the Ancon, a
Panama Railway Steamship Company merchant vessel converted into a
headquarters ship, enabled him to remain off the Omaha beaches for
three weeks instead of leaving the assault area as quickly as possible
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in a transport, used as a flagship. After the fierce fighting sub
sided on the beaches. Force "0" experienced no difficulties like those
earlier pileups on shore. General Hoge's shore party had smoothed out
the process of rapidly moving supplies to inland dumps. In spite of
Ramsay's initial prohibition against beaching and drying out LSTs, Hall
made extensive use of this time-and-labor-saving technique and also
successfully used the same method with the LCIs and the British
coasters.
Personalities played an important role in the success of the
operation; Hall had nothing but the most cooperative contacts with
Generals Gerow, Huebner, Gerhardt, and Hoge. As far as ability of
naval commanders was concerned, Hewitt provided more resourceful and
knowledgeable leadership in North Africa and the Mediterranean than
did Kirk in Britain and off Normandy. With such favorable progress
in preparing for and conducting amphibious warfare. Hall believed
that joint and combined forces were capable of carrying an attack
against any enemy stronghold.
Hall's own contributions to the Allied success in storming the
Normandy coasts rested on his performance as commander of Assault
Force "0." His planning with the army had produced an effective
fighting machine in his attack force, and the good training provided
by the Eleventh Amphibious Force paid off in such things as the smooth
combat loading of the assault ships. Assigned the heavily fortified
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and defended Omaha beach— "the toughest nut of all to crack"r-^^^ as
his landing site, Hall deftly guided his force into hostile waters.
At the same time he calmed the apprehensions of Moon, Captain Sanders,
the demolition units, and General Huebner. Because of the small number
of ships in the bombardment group, the nature of German defenses, the
short time allocated for pre-invasion bombardment, and the failure
of the Army Air Forces to hit beach fortifications, the inadequate
softening up of the beaches is perhaps understandable. There is no
doubt of the efficacy of the postlanding naval gunfire support pro
vided, especially by the destroyers close to the beaches. Opposed to
untried gadgetry such as the DD tanks and the Mulberry, Hall skill
fully sped the vast unloading during the prolonged buildup period by
means such as urging the end of the army priorities system; replacing
the naval officer in charge at Omaha; drying out the LSTs, coasters,
and LCTs; and building port facilities in the Carentan estuary.
Later, Hall received several decorations for his participation
in Operation Neptune-Overlord: the army Distinguished Service Medal,
the decoration and diploma of the Legion of Honor and the croix de
guerre with palm from France, and the honorary appointment as Companion
of the Distinguished Service Order and the Oak Leaf for Mention in
in Dispatches from Britain. More personally. General Thomas T. Handy,
the planning officer sent as observer by the Joint Chiefs, noted that
^^^Leatham to Hall, 20 June 1944, Correspondence: 1944 file. JLH Papers.
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the manner in which Hall handled "the most difficult landing operation
102 we have had was magnificent." Hall's old friend. Admiral Stark,
wrote that Hall had been a good reed on which to lean and had imparted
a sense of security and confidence. Stark continued:
In those anxious first days in the assault on Normandy, and the toughness of your own particular personal task, I thanked the Lord many times that you were in that particular point of impact, knowing that you would come through in spite of hell and high water. My confidence was 100% justified and realized.
' After Hall returned to Britain from the Omaha beach area, the
Eleventh Amphibious Force assumed additional responsibilities: it
would now deal directly with the top army commanders in the planning
and execution of its assigned tasks. This change made Kirk's job
unnecessary.Later in July, Stark recommended to King that Hall
be promoted to vice admiral and head the postwar naval mission in
Germany. A thoroughgoing fighting man. Hall asked Stark to withdraw
the request. Hall felt that he could contribute much more to combat
operations than to occupation duty. He would rather go to the Pacific
in command of an LST than to go to Germany as a vice admiral.
102 Maj. Gen. T. T. Handy to JLH, 16 June 1944, ibid.
103 Stark to JLH, 19 September 1944, ibid.
104 10 July 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force; 11th Amphib ious Force: Operation Plan EE-44, serial 00863 of 10 July 1944, Operations Plans: 8th and 11th Amphibious Forces file, JLH Papers.
^^^Two draft letters. Stark to King, no serial, n.d.. Miscel laneous file, JLH Papers; JLH Oral History, p. 124; JLH interview, 20 May 1977.
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Stark complied with Hall's wishes, and on 28 September Hall hauled
down his flag in the Ancon and started toward the United States for a
new assignment.
In the conduct of the European war, the invasion of Normandy
represented a vital step in the total defeat of Nazi Germany. The
successful amphibious assault on the beaches in the Bay of the Seine
enabled the Allies subsequently to secure a lodgement from which to
launch the massive armies that fought through France and Belgium,
across the Rhine, and into the German homeland. For the American and
British navies, the Neptune phase of the operation demonstrated the
high degree of development and sophistication of the amphibious assault
as a vital form of modern warfare. The Allied return to Europe was a
mighty triumph of seapower.^®^
Strategically, the Normandy invasion was the culmination of
the Allied plan to bring overwhelming military power to bear directly
against the German enemy, after that enemy had been weakened by a
series of attacks on the Mediterranean periphery and by the enormous
drain of German resources on the Russian front. Although the American
strategists, expecially Marshall, had argued vehemently for an earlier
direct frontal attack through France, Allied resources were scarcely
^®^28 September 1944, War Diary, 11th Amphibious Force; Orders and Travel: 7 January 1942-27 December 1945 file, JLH Papers.
^^^The phrase is from Macintyre, Naval War, p. 351,
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108 sufficient before 1944 to stage an assault of such magnitude. The
policy actually followed by Allied planners— Mediterranean operations
in 1942 and 1943 and Overlord in 1944— was strategically correct and
effective.In concentrating on the "Germany-first" strategy,
American and British planners moved'wisely in destroying the most
dangerous of the Axis powers and in keeping the third Allied partner,
the Soviet Union, firmly within the coalition. Stalin, who had pushed
the cross-channel attack since 1942, responded with enthusiasm to
Operation Overlord by his own renewed offensive that rolled westward.
The defeat of Germany was assured.
With that defeat came the continued presence of American armed
forces in Europe and the inevitable participation of the United States
in European affairs. Completely reversing its prewar isolationism, the
United States emerged from World War II as the major western European
power and as the predominant seapower in the Mediterranean and in
Europe. Without the wartime amphibious capabilities that had evolved,
Allied armies could not have paved the way for such vast American
influence.
108 Historians such as MacDonald, Mighty Endeavor, p. 515, and Roskill, The Offensive, Part II, p. 7, support this view, as does former U.S. Army historian Albert Norman, Operation Overlord: Design and Reality, The Allied Invasion of Western Europe (Harrisburg, Pa.: Military Service Publishing Co., 1952), pp. 207-9 (hereafter cited as Norman, Operation Overlord). Weigley, American Way of War, p. 352, argued that British Mediterranean strategy removed Allied forces from decisive areas.
^^^Norman, Operation Overlord, pp. 207, 210.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER VII
OPERATION ICEBERG: OKINAWA
Background
While the coalition powers successfully fought Germany and
Italy in the European struggle, a war of a different sort progressed
in the Pacific. In contrast to the combined armed forces used against
Nazi Europe, the war against Japan in the central and southwest Pacific
was essentially under American control.
Before the United States entered the war, the country assumed
primary responsibility for the Pacific in the ABC agreements of
27 March 1941.^ At the Arcadia Conference of December 1941-January
1942, Roosevelt and Churchill reaffirmed their earlier "Germany-first"
strategy and settled on holding tactics in the Pacific and Far East.
The Allies would hold the Malay Barrier, Burma, Australia, and
2 Singapore, defend India, and support China and the Philippines. After
Pearl Harbor, the swift Japanese southward expansion— Malaya, Singapore,
^Supra, p. 15 .
^Matloff and Snell, Strategic Planning, 1941-1942, p. 122; Grace P. Hayes, "The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in World War II: The War Against Japan," vol. 1: "Pearl Harbor Through Trident" (Historical Section: JCS, 1953), pp. 51-56, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Hayes, "Pearl Harbor Through Trident").
265
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Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines quickly fell to
Japanese control— precipitated the U.S, Army’s sending troops to
reinforce Australia and New Caledonia. By mid-February, Admiral King,
apprehensive of threats to Allied possessions and lines of communica
tion, pressured the Joint Chiefs of Staff for more troops to garrison
various Pacific islands. Within a few months, 275,000 army officers
3 and men received orders for service in the Pacific. The buildup of
U.S. armed forces in the Pacific had started.
As the demand for American forces and resources rapidly
increased in early 1942, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed in mid-March
to a three-way strategic division of the world to combat the Axis
powers: the United States would command the Pacific area; the British
would supervise the Middle East and Southeast Asia; and both nations
would be responsible for Europe and the Atlantic.^ With the United
States officially charged with the Pacific, the Combined Chiefs of
Staff would determine overall grand strategy and allocate resources;
but British planners would have only an indirect voice in questions of
military tactics in the Pacific theater. The problems of coalition
warfare would not encumber the conduct of the Pacific war.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff assigned command of operations in the
®Matloff and Snell, Strategic Planning, 1941-1942, pp. 148-51, 154. 4 Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain and the War against Japan, 1941-1945 (New York: Oxford Univer sity Press, 1978), p. 135 (hereafter cited as Thorne, Allies of a Kind)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 267
Southwest Pacific Area, including Australia and the area northeastward
to the Philippines, to the army, in the person of General Douglas
MacArthur. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz would command operations in the
rest of the Pacific theater (Pacific Ocean Area),^ which was subdivided
into south, central, and north Pacific areas. In contrast to Europe,
the Pacific did not have a unified command, and any disputes pitted
the army against the navy, rather than the United States against
Britain.
During the early months of 1942, joint strategy in the Pacific
consisted mainly of trying to prevent further Japanese expansion.®
But then two American victories— Coral Sea in May and Midway Island in
June— halted the Japanese offensive by forestalling the invasion of
Port Moresby and by destroying a large part of the Japanese carrier
force. Both MacArthur and Nimitz believed that American forces should
take advantage of the enemy setbacks by seizing the opportunity for
offensive operations, and in Washington King and Marshall concurred.
In addition to the submarine warfare against Japanese shipping, there
soon began a series of amphibious campaigns that aimed at constricting
Japan's territorial gains, destroying the enemy fleet, providing bases
for U.S. ships and planes, and eventually bringing American forces
^Matloff and Snell, Strategic Planning, 1941-1942, p. 169; Hayes, "Pearl Harbor Through Trident," pp. 137, 142-43.
^John B. Lundstrom, The First South Pacific Campaign; Pacific Fleet Strategy, December 1941-June 1942 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1976), disputes this general interpretation of American strategy.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 268
within striking range of the Japanese homeland.^
The first of these amphibious assaults was Guadalcanal in the
Solomons in August 1942. Moving to secure the island where the
Japanese had begun building an airfield that would be a threat to the
line of communications in the Pacific, Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly
Turner's South Pacific Amphibious Force landed more than 20,000 marines
in the Guadalcanal-Tulagi area on 7 August. In November MacArthur's
Southwest Pacific Forces attacked the Buna-Gona coastal plain of New
Guinea. The string of island campaigns that ultimately rolled toward
Japan had begun.
Hampering the speedup of offensive operations was the shortage
of resources allocated for the Pacific. The North African campaign
and the projected Mediterranean assaults gobbled up men and shipping;
the Pacific was secondary. To keep the initiative so tentatively
grasped, the Joint Chiefs secured from the British at the Gasablanca
Conference in January 1943 approval for sending additional resources
to maintain the momentum in the southwest Pacific and also for
launching a drive through the central Pacific. Churchill promised
Q British naval support after the war against Germany ended.
Deciding the strategy of additional offensive operations
^Weigley, American Way of War, p. 286.
®Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-1944, pp. 30-33; John Miller, Jr., "The Casablanca Conference and Pacific Strategy," Military Affairs 13 (Winter 1949):209-15.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 269
engrossed the military planners in Washington during the first half of
1943. Proponents of MacArthur's New Guinea-Mindanao-Philippines
approach to Japan vied with the navy's proposed central Pacific drive
through the Gilberts, the Marshalls, the Carolines, the Marianas, and
Formosa. The Combined Chiefs of Staff approved the Joint Chiefs’
compromise version encompassing both plans at the Trident Conference
in May 1943 and also agreed not to curtail supplies needed in the
Pacific. Finally, on 20 July, the Joint Chiefs ordered Nimitz to begin
preparations for central Pacific operations, which would, in fact,
complement MacArthur's campaign in New Guinea by using Nimitz's growing
fleet with its backbone of fast new aircraft carriers.^ The Combined
Chiefs of Staff sanctioned the double-barrel strategy at the Cairo
Conference in November-December 1943, and the British again promised
forces for the Pacific after Germany's defeat.
Beginning the two-pronged surge through the hundreds of
Japanese-held islands, MacArthur's amphibious forces adopted the tactic
of "leap-frogging" about the southwest Pacific— of "hitting them where
they ain't"— avoiding a direct assault on heavily defended places such
as Wewak and Rabaul but sealing them off by capturing adjacent small
Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-1944, pp. 91-105, 135-38, 192-93. Pogue, Organizer of Victory, pp. 170-76, gives a good account of the arguments at the Washington Conference in March.
^^Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-1944, pp. 373-78.
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islands or beachheads. By the summer of 1944, Rear Admiral
Daniel E. Barbey's Seventh Amphibious Force had staged numerous small-
scale amphibious attacks in New Guinea, in New Britain, in the
Admiralty Islands, and in New Ireland that isolated Rabaul and opened
12 the Bismarcks Barrier from the Coral Sea into the western Pacific.
Simultaneously, the drive through the central Pacific began in
November 1943 with a full-scale amphibious assault on Tarawa in the
Gilberts. Rapidly moving to the Marshalls, then the Garolines, and
the Marianas, Nimitz’s forces, with Vice Admiral Raymond A. Spruance
commanding the Fifth Fleet and Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner
commanding the amphibious force, pushed the American position forward
to the edge of Japan's inner defensive perimeter.By August 1944
the Philippines and southern Japan were within range of U.S. land-based
aircraft.
As the southwest and central Pacific campaigns moved American
forces closer to their ultimate objective— the Japanese home islands—
See Daniel E. Barbey, MacArthur*s Amphibious Navy; Seventh Amphibious Force Operations, 1943-1945 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1969), for a vivid account by MacArthur's amphibious commander (hereafter cited as Barbey, MacArthur*s Amphibious Navy).
12 King reorganized the naval command structure in March 1943, changing area commands to numbered fleets. E.g., Halsey's South Pacific Force became the Third Fleet, and Wilkinson's Amphibious Force, South Pacific, changed to Third Amphibious Force. See Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, 1:493-94.
13 Vol. 2 of Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, covers these operations in minute detail. Morison, Strategy and Compromise, pp. 94-95.
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joint planners debated the best route to that destination. By October
1944, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had decided on a strike against Luzon
in the Philippines by MacArthur, followed by Nimitz's forces invading
Two Jima in the Bonins and Okinawa in the Ryukyus.^^
As the American cross-Pacific thrusts continued and planners
charted the future operations, the British once again offered, at the
second Quebec Conference in September, to send more of their fleet to
help in the final onslaught. King had always resisted the entrance of
British naval forces into the American naval war, because he feared a
drain on U.S. resources to supply the fleet, and because he thought
British assistance was unnecessary and should be kept in the Indian
Ocean. Nevertheless, the Combined Chiefs of Staff sanctioned the use
of a self-supporting British fleet in major Pacific landings.A
later conference between the British and American commanders of their
respective Pacific fleets resulted in a clearer understanding of the
^ Benis M. Frank and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Victory and Occupation, in History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1968), p. 13 (hereafter cited as Frank and Shaw, Victory and Occupation).
^^John Winton, The Forgotten Fleet: The British Navy in the Pacific, 1944-1945 (New York: Coward-McCann., 1970), pp. 18, 36 (here after cited as Winton, Forgotten Fleet); Thorne, Allies of a Kind, pp. 415-16. On p. 266, Thorne attributes King's reluctance to accept British help to his wanting to avoid coalition command and consultation difficulties. In Ernest J. King and Walter M. Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (New York: Norton, 1952), p. 570, King also mentions the political unacceptability of possibly having to make room for the British by withdrawing American naval units (hereafter cited as King and Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King).
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role of the British, who would be under U.S. operational command.
The first of those campaigns to use a small amount of British
support was Okinawa— part of the projected three-way attack designed
to apply "unremitting pressure" against the far-flung Japanese Empire
by carrying American forces within easy air striking range of Kyushu
and Honshu, the principal islands of Japan proper. The planners felt
that the successful seizure of the three major islands of Okinawa, Two
Jima, and Luzon would enable the American military to weaken Japan by
blockade and bombardment and would pave the way for the invasion of
Kyushu and Honshu. MacArthur's forces had already assaulted Leyte in
October 1944 and Luzon in January 1945, and Nimitz had attacked the
Palaus in September 1944 and Two Jima in February 1945. Okinawa,
slated for April 1945, offered ample facilities for air and naval bases
to serve as a staging area for subsequent campaigns.
After receiving the go-ahead from Nimitz, Admiral Spruance,
whose Fifth Fleet would conduct the assault against Okinawa (called
"Operation Iceberg") ordered Admiral Turner to plan the amphibious
phase of the campaign. Turner would land Lieutenant General Simon B.
Buckner, USA, and the Tenth Army on the Hagushi beaches of southwestern
l&Memo of understanding reached in conference 17-19 December 1944 concerning employment of the British Pacific Fleet, Records of Strategic Plans Division, series XII, Box 155.
^^Roy E. Appleman et al., Okinawa: The Last Battle, in United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1948), pp. 4, 6-7 (hereafter cited as Appleman et al., Okinawa).
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Okinawa. Further subdividing the assault force, Turner named Rear
Admiral Lawrence F. Reifsnider as commander of the Northern Attack
Force and Rear Admiral Hall as commander of the Southern Attack Force
Preparation
After Hall left Britain in late September 1944, he returned
to Washington briefly and found that he would become commander of
Amphibious Group Twelve of the Pacific Fleet. Elated at the prospects
of getting in on the action in the Pacific at last, he arrived at
Honolulu on 28 October and reported to Nimitz and Turner. Hall had
replaced Turner as head of the strategy section at the Naval War
College in 1939 and was pleased to be working under the great amphib
ious commander once again.
As the amphibious operations increased in the central Pacific
in 1944, several organizational changes enlarged the size and scope of
the naval forces. In March King had designated Turner, now a vice
admiral, as commander of the amphibious forces in the central Pacific,
expanding his responsibilities from commanding the Fifth Amphibious
Force to supervising all amphibious activity in the entire Pacific
18 Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 14; Victory in the Pacific; 1945 (Boston: Little,
Brown & Co., 1960), p. 8 6 (hereafter cited as Morison, Victory in the Pacific); E. P. Forrestel, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, USN; A Study in Command (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1966), p. 187 (hereafter cited as Forrestel, Spruance).
^^Orders and Travel, 7 January 1942-27 December 1945 file, JLH Papers; JLH interview, 16 July 1977.
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Ocean Area. By June Turner's forces included six amphibious groups
and a training and an administrative command. Wilkinson's Third
20 Amphibious Force moved from the south to the central Pacific.
Further expansion took place in September with the designation of
21 eight more amphibious groups for the Pacific Fleet.
When Hall assumed the duties of commanding Amphibious Group
Twelve, one of the new groups being formed in the central Pacific,
some of his staff from the Eleventh Amphibious Force were with him.
Captain Marion Little was now chief of staff; Lieutenant Commander
Victor T. Boatwright remained as gunnery officer; Lieutenant T. B.
Larkin, Jr., who had joined Hall's staff after the Normandy invasion,
continued as flag secretary; Lieutenant Harold J. Stokes, Jr., came
along as flag lieutenant; and Captain Robert E. Mailing remained as
communications officer. Newcomers included Commander Edmund S. L.
Marshall, operations officer, and Commander Lawrence C. Leaver,
beachmaster.
As a recent arrival to the war in the Pacific, Hall spent the
20 Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, 2:861, 896; "Administrative History: Commander in Chief, Pacific: Amphibious Forces," 1:104 (here after cited as "Administrative History: CinCPac, Amphibious Forces").
^^"Administrative History: CinCPac, Amphibious Forces," 1:129-30. Turner complained to Conolly, 28 December 1944, that he did not know what to do with so many group commanders, that some would just "have to sit on their tails." Papers of Admiral Richmond K. Turner, series I, OA, NHD (items from the Turner collection hereafter cited as Turner P a p e r s ) . 22 Roster of officers, 12th Amphibious Group, 1 December 1944, World War II Command File, OA, NHD.
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next two months studying the preliminary plans for additional opera
tions and becoming familiar with doctrines, organization, and earlier
23 operations in the central Pacific, While in Britain he had kept
abreast of developments in Turner's command, but on-the-spot observa
tion and participation were imperative. Reviewing the earlier
operations. Hall became aware of the valuable amphibious lessons
learned from each of these landings. In the Solomons, for example,
Guadalcanal and Tulagi demonstrated the need for close air support of
the landing force and for larger and better shore parties to expedite
unloading and to prevent beach pileups. Although one destroyer closed
the beaches to five hundred yards to deliver close-in fire support,
the navy followed its usual tactics of long-range, rapid fire
bombardment.
In the Gilberts, Tarawa (November 1943) revealed the continuing
shortcomings of air and naval gunfire support. In addition, there were
difficulties with the ship-to-shore movement of supplies, inadequate
control boats, and faulty communications. The landing also demon
strated the need for demolition teams to remove obstacles. The Tarawa
^^28 October 1944-25 January 1945, War Diary, 12th Amphibious Group, 28 October 1944-24 August 1945, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as War Diary, 12th Amphibious Group); Command History, Amphibious Group 12, p. 2, serial 00778-12 of 7 November 1944, World War II Command File, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Command History, Amphibious Group 12).
^^Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, 1:343-53.
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25 operation precipitated numerous changes. Afterwards, naval forces
instigated short-range, deliberate, preliminary fire to destroy rather
than to neutralize enemy defenses-— a change in the method of gunfire
support used in the Pacific. The first campaign using the new
technique was at Kwajalein where Rear Admiral Richard L. ("Close-In")
26 Conolly ran some of his old battleships in to 2,000 yards. To
improve naval gunfire support, the higher commanders established a
shore bombardment training program at Pearl Harbor and set up training
bases at various locations in the Hawaiian Islands in September 1943.
27 By early 1944 spasmodic gunnery practices became tightly scheduled.
Another change to increase the effectiveness of fire support came
from setting up land-based fire support coordination centers (FSCC),
used at Iwo Jima (January 1945) for the first time. All fire support,
air liaison, and shore fire control communications men from the navy,
marines, and army trained with the newly formed joint assault signal
company (JASCO). The communications failures at Tarawa led to the
adoption of the AGC (Auxiliary General Communications) as the amphib
ious force flagship in the Marshalls campaigns of early 1944.
25 Isely and Growl, U.S. Marines and Amphibious War, pp. 251-52; "Administrative History: CinCPac, Amphibious Forces," 1:74. 26 Weller, "Salvo— Splash!", p. 848, calls this a "radical departure" from North African and southern Pacific practices; Isely and Growl, U.S. Marines and Amphibious War, pp. 272, 587.
27 Administrative Command, Amphibious Forces, Pacific, circular letter no. AL135, n.d.. Turner Papers, series VII, no. 1.
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Another off-shoot of poor communications at Tarawa was equipment for
28 control craft. Tarawa also revealed the need for thorough recon
naissance of the landing beaches and for blasting designated channels
clear for the attack force. Thereafter, underwater demolition teams
participated regularly in Pacific operations, beginning with Kwajalein
29 in the Marshalls in January 1944.
Other amphibious innovations aided the Pacific island assaults.
A few LVTs (Landing Vehicles, Tracked, called amphibian tractors or
amtracs), essential for carrying troops from landing vessels over the
30 jagged coral reefs to the beaches, made their debut at Guadalcanal.
As the war progressed, modified amtracs took on turrets, armor, and
ramps, and aided in fire support. Not until the Leyte invasion of
October 1944 were amtracs used over normal beaches without coral
31 reefs. The old standby in the Mediterranean and at Normandy, the
DUKW, did not appear in the Pacific until the Kwajalein assault of
28 Frank and Shaw, Victory and Occupation, pp. 669-73.
29 Edward T. Higgins, in collaboration with Dean Phillips, Web- footed Warriors: The Story of a "Frogman" in the Navy During World War II (New York: Exposition Press, 1955), p. 9 (hereafter cited as Higgins and Phillips, Webfooted Warriors); Fane and Moore, Naked Warriors, pp. 25-40.
^^"History of Landing Vehicle, Tracked," p. 40, Turner Papers, series X, no. 11 (hereafter cited as "History of LVT"). For a brief description of the development and use of the amtracs, see Maynard M. Nohdren, "The Amphibian Tractor, Jack of All Missions," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 72 (January 1946):13-17.
31 "History of LVT," pp. 1-2; Third Amphibious Force Command History, pt. 1, p. 12, Turner Papers, series XIII, A 12-1 (hereafter cited as 3rd Amphibious Force Command History).
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January 1944. Pontoon causeways assisted the beaching of supplies,
32 beginning with Makin, in the Gilberts, in November 1943. Arriving
in the Pacific in the spring of 1943, the LSTs, the stalwart of any
amphibious landing, quickly went into service, In June they began
operating in the southwest Pacific at Woodlark and Kiriwina and in the
south Pacific at New Georgia in the Solomons. In November the LSTs
were used in the central Pacific at Makin and Tarawa. Some, with
33 modifications, became hospital or repair ships. The LCIs appeared
on the scene at the same time as the LSTs and, after being refitted,
served as gunfire support craft, beginning with the Treasury Islands
campaign in October.
While Hall and his staff caught up on earlier operations in
the Pacific and organized the new amphibious group. Turner worked on
the operation order for the amphibious assault on Okinawa, with D-Day
(called L or Love-Day) scheduled for 1 April 1945. The plan called
for a week of preliminary air and naval bombardment; the capture of
Kerama Retto, a group of small islands fifteen miles off the south
western coast of Okinawa; the assault on Okinawa by Turner's joint
expeditionary force, with General Buckner commanding the Tenth Army;
32 Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, 2:671, 844; Ladd, Assault from the Sea, p. 147.
33 Barbey, MacArthur's Amphibious Navy, pp. 62, 65; Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, 1:501, 2:669.
34 Frank and Shaw, Victory and Occupation, p. 6 6 8 ; Third Amphib ious Force Command History, pt. 1, p. 7.
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the capture of southern Okinawa; the seizure of le Shima and northern
Okinawa; and, finally, the capture of other islands in the Ryukyus.
Buckner’s Tenth Army consisted of the Marine Third Amphibious Corps,
made up of three marine divisions and commanded by Major General
Roy S. Geiger, and the Twenty-fourth Army Corps of four divisions led
by Major General John B. Hodge. Another army division waited in New
Caledonia as a reserve. Altogether, the attack and service forces of
the Tenth Army totaled about 287,000 men— the largest expeditionary
35 force yet formed in the Pacific. It represented a new kind of
central Pacific operation; for the first time an entire army would
36 invade an island. Of these forces, only four divisions would be
involved in the initial assault by Turner’s task force. Reifsnider’s
Northern Attack Force would land two marine divisions, and Hall’s
Southern Attack Force would carry two army divisions to the Hagushi
beaches on the southwestern coast of Okinawa. Hall also had overall
37 command of both attack forces.
Staffs of all the principal naval commanders— Turner,
Reifsnider. Hall, and Rear Admiral William H. P. Blandy, commander of
the newly organized Amphibious Support Force— worked closely together
at Pearl Harbor during the early winter months of 1944-45, devising
35 Morison, Victory in the Pacific, pp. 87-88, 90.
^^Edwin P. Hoyt, How They Won the War in the Pacific; Nimitz and His Admirals (New York: Weybright & Talley, 1970), p. 478 (here after cited as Hoyt, Nimitz and His Admirals).
07 Appleman et al., Okinawa, p. 32.
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the naval plans, all under the careful supervision of Nimitz, who
38 was responsible for the entire operation. Generals Buckner and
Geiger also participated in the planning process, although Turner
complained that he was having a "hell of a time" trying to get
Buckner and his staff to become amphibious-minded.^9
Nimitz held weekly conferences at which the admirals discussed
the upcoming invasion. At one of these sessions in early January,
General Hodge, who had flown from Leyte, informed them that his
Twenty-fourth Corps could not be made ready for Operation Iceberg
unless his divisions that were still fighting in Leyte and Samar were
released by MacArthur for rehabilitation and training. In addition,
about ninety ships loaded with corps equipment waited in scattered
ports for unloading at Leyte. The absence of the Twenty-fourth Corps
would threaten the whole plan of operation. Nimitz responded
promptly and sent Hall and Major General Herman Feldman, a supply
specialist, to Leyte to get Hodge’s troops ready for additional
combat. Hall left Honolulu with some of his staff on 25 January and
reached the Leyte area four days later. His new amphibious command
ship, the Teton, followed.By way of introduction. Turner wrote to
38 Morison, Victory in the Pacific, pp. 86-87.
39 Vice Adm. Richmond K. Turner to Rear Adm. R. L. Conolly, 28 December 1944, series I, Correspondence: May-December 1944 folder. Turner Papers. Turner continued that there was no place in the 10th Army for brains— only for soldiers,
^®JLH Oral History, p. 255; Orders and Travel: 7 January 1942- 27 December 1945 file, JLH Papers.
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the commanding general of the Seventh Infantry Division, "I am sure
you will find him a very able and cooperative officer. He has not
operated in the Pacific before this, but went through nearly all the
amphibious landings in Europe as a group commander ; and has been
out here long enough to become well acquainted with conditions in this
theater
At Leyte Hall served in a dual capacity as senior naval
officer present of the Pacific Fleet, and as an attack force com
mander for Okinawa, and had four separate tasks: to assist Hodge's
corps unload the waiting ships of men and equipment, to prepare the
operation plan for his task force for the Okinawa invasion, to load
the Twenty-fourth Corps, less the Seventy-seventh Infantry Division,
for the attack, and to prepare for and conduct training exercises and
the pre-assault rehearsal.
After Hall arrived at Leyte Gulf and set up his headquarters
ashore, he was surprised to discover that the army and navy in the
area lacked sufficient organization to perform the usual functions of
a base. This deficiency had helped cause the difficulties in unloading
ships carrying Twenty-fourth Corps men and equipment. Hall tried to
borrow some landing craft from MacArthur's Seventh Fleet to unload
these supply ships, but Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, the fleet's
41 Turner to Maj. Gen. A. V. Arnold, 15 February 1945, series I, Turner Papers.
42 Command History, Amphibious Group 12, pp. 2-3.
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commander, could not easily spare the needed craft. Finally, Vice
Admiral Daniel E. Barbey, who commanded the Seventh Amphibious Force,
loaned Hall enough LCTs and their crews to take care of the unloading
problem, and Hall could call forward from scattered Pacific ports the
ships carrying Hodge's men and supplies.At Hall's request, Hodge
had provided detailed information on the cargoes on board the merchant
vessels, and the admiral could then determine the adequacy of the
lighterage available and could make efficient use of it.^^
As Hodge's corps, released by MacArthur on 10 February, arrived
in Leyte, Hall's command began rehabilitating the tired troops and then
training them for the Okinawa attack. Most of these forces were combat
veterans of Pacific campaigns, and Hall provided refresher training
in amphibious techniques and tactics in the limited time available
before mounting out for the next assault. Hodge and Hall worked well
together and had no real difficulties in planning and preparing for
Operation Iceberg.
43 JLH to Turner, 25 February 1945, Correspondence; 1945 file, JLH Papers; JLH Oral History, p. 256; Commander Amphibious Group 12 (Commander Southern Attack Force— CTF 55), Report on the Capture of Okinawa Gunto, Phases I and II, 14 March-9 June 1945, p. 166, serial 0287 of 31 July 1945, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Hall's Action Report)
^^JLH to Maj. Gen. John R. Hodge, 3 and 15 February 1945, Cor respondence: 1945 file, JLH Papers.
45 JLH interview, 2 July 1977; Appleman et al., Okinawa, pp. 38- 40; James Belote and William Belote, Typhoon of Steel: The Battle for Okinawa (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 37 (hereafter cited as Belote and Belote, Typhoon of Steel).
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During this preparation period, the commander of a PT boat
squadron reported to Hall for duty and said that he expected to take
part in the Okinawa invasion. Since Hall had no knowledge of the
prospective use of the PT boats, he sent a dispatch to Turner
requesting information so that the amphibious group could arrange
training for the unit. Turner, involved with the Iwo Jima landing,
sent back word that the small boats would not be allowed at Okinawa
until L-plus-forty-day, preferably much later. At an earlier amphib
ious assault in the Solomon Islands, some PT boats had mistaken Rear
Admiral T. S. Wilkinson's flagship, in which Turner was also embarked,
for an enemy vessel and had sunk it, so Turner had as little use for
the unseaworthy boats as Hall did.^^
While these activities occupied Hall at Leyte, his flagship
completed the long voyage from Pearl Harbor. Hall's chief of staff.
Little, and other staff members drafted the operation order for Okinawa
while at sea and gave it to the admiral when they arrived on 21 Febru
ary. After a little more refining, the attack order as well as the
rehearsal training order were ready.
During the next few weeks Hall's command prepared for departure
46 JLH Oral History, pp. 256-59; JLH interview, 13 July 1977. Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, 2:1083, tells part of this same story but quotes Turner as saying the boats were banned until D-plus- four-day or later. Ibid., 1:559-62, describes the loss of the McCawley.
47 Command History, Amphibious Group 12, p. 3; 28 January- 21 February 1945, War Diary, 12th Amphibious Group.
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and combat loaded the transports. Remembering his difficulties with
the loading process in the Mediterranean, Hall changed the organization
of his transports and expanded from nine to eleven the number of
divisions of his three transport squadrons. He assigned the two
temporary transport divisions the task of lifting Tenth Army, Twenty-
fourth Corps, and island command and support troops and supplies,
thus separating them from assault troops and equipment. These changes
would provide a better command organization, would simplify deploy
ment in the transport area, and would offer fewer targets for enemy
attacks.The Third Amphibious Corps did not use similar loading
techniques, but General Geiger was so favorably impressed with Hall's
reorganization that he requested such an arrangement for subsequent
operations.^9
Loading the landing force— the Seventh and Ninety-sixth
Divisions, and some Tenth Army and Twenty-fourth Corps men and equip
ment— began on 27 February at Leyte and took place over open beaches
at Dulag, Bito River, and Rizal. Poor sea and surf conditions slowed
the embarkation process, but Hall's force finished loading on 14 March,
48 JLH to Turner, 25 February 1945, Correspondence: 1945 file, JLH Papers; Commander Amphibious Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet, General Action Report: Capture of Okinawa Gunto— Phases I and II, pt. 5, sec. I, pp. 16-17, 19, serial 01400 of 25 July 1945, OA, NHD (here after cited as Turner's Action Report).
49 Frank and Shaw, Victory and Occupation, p. 93; Charles S. Nichols, Jr., and Henry Shaw, Okinawa: Victory in the Pacific (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1955), p. 93 (here after cited as Nichols and Shaw, Okinawa).
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the beginning of the training and rehearsal period. Happily, no
problems with the army command, such as Hall had experienced in the
Mediterranean but not at Normandy, interfered with orderly loading.
On 14 March, Hall’s attack force moved out for a week of
training exercises and rehearsals in the Gulf of Leyte. Admiral
Turner, fresh from the Iwo Jima invasion, arrived in the Eldorado
to observe. Hodge was on board Hall’s flagship while commanders of
the Seventh and Ninety-sixth Divisions sailed on other vessels. As
ships and boats conducted individual and group exercises and drills,
planes from a support carrier unit and destroyers from the escort
group simulated firing runs and bombardment although no actual
firings took place because of the nearby local population. The force
made three approaches to the transport area and boated the troops
each time, but only two actual landings took place, on 16 and 19
March. Hall tried to approximate as closely as possible the assault
on the Hagushi beaches, even though the Philippine and Okinawa beaches
were not alike. In spite of the dissimilarities, the rehearsals gave
the participants an opportunity to improve the organization and
timing of the attack force.
Following the first rehearsal, the various commanders held a
^^Hall’s Action Report, pp. 166-68. Appleman et al., Okinawa, pp. 41, 43, point out more difficulties in the loading process.
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 10, 22-24; U.S.S. Teton, Report of Capture of Okinawa Gunto, p. 1, serial 042 of 23 June 1945, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Teton Action Report); Turner’s Action Report, pt. 2, pp. 3-4.
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meeting to try to pinpoint problems and correct them before the next
exercise. Turner sent Hall a memorandum containing suggestions for
improving the performance of the force. After the second rehearsal.
Hall called another session on board the Teton. In addition to
Turner and all of Hall's task group commanders, Buckner, Hodge, and
Major Generals Archibald V. Arnold and James L. Bradley, the commanding
generals of the Seventh and Ninety-sixth Infantry Divisions, and their
52 regimental commanders evaluated the landing. As in his previous
operations, Hall always considered these frank discussions by joint
commanders to be highly beneficial to the success of the subsequent
assault.
When Hall's attack force returned to Leyte, final repairs,
maintenance, and loading of supplies readied the ships for departure.
Hall was prepared for his first amphibious operation in the Pacific.
Hodge later acknowledged the debt the Twenty-fourth Corps owed to Hall
and his staff during the difficult days of hurried preparation and of
loading for Okinawa. Hall’s fine assistance "made it possible to
53 accomplish the almost impossible task of meeting the target date."
A newcomer to the war in the Pacific, Hall entered Turner’s
52 Amphibious Group 12— Critique on Landing Exercises, JLH Papers; 17-26 March 1945, War Diary, Commander 5th Amphibious Force, Pacific Fleet, 1 September 1944-14 October 1945, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as War Diary, 5th Amphibious Force).
^^Hodge to JLH, 3 June 1945, Correspondence: 1945 file, JLH Papers.
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smoothly operating amphibious domain with fewer responsibilities than
he had exercised as commander of either the Eighth or Eleventh Amphib
ious Forces. Nevertheless, wanting to contribute to the Pacific
campaigns. Hall accepted his reduced role in order to remain active
in the fighting. After participating in the preliminary planning at
Pearl Harbor, he arranged the unloading of the back-up ships carrying
necessities for Hodge's corps. Experienced in Pacific warfare,
Hodge's troops needed only rest and refresher amphibious training,
which Hall's command provided but which was unlike the elaborate
training program that Hall had supervised in Britain before the
Normandy invasion; Hall's reorganization of the transports did con
tribute to less complicated loading procedures. The rehearsals for
Hall's force, like all rehearsals, did not duplicate actual assault
conditions but did contribute to the better functioning of the assault
force.
The Attack
Hall's Southern Attack Force, with a total of 371 ships and
craft, part of Turner's 1213-ship armada, began its sortie from the
Leyte area on 25 March when the slow-moving tractor flotilla, con
sisting of LSTs, LSMs, and LGI(F)s, got underway. Two days later,
the bulk of the force-— two transport groups carrying 55,716men and a
support carrier unit-— sailed for the objective. Hall's flagship,
Teton, commanded by Captain D. R. Tallman, carried Hodge and his
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staff; and Turner, in the Eldorado, accompanied Hall's force.
Although bad weather hampered progress and caused diversions in the
planned course, the attack force made up lost time and arrived in the
transport area on schedule. The convoys encountered no air or sea
opposition during the voyage.
Responsible for helping to capture, occupy, and defend
Okinawa, Hall expected to be near that island for a long time. After
landing the Twenty-fourth Corps, Hall's attack force would support
the troops by naval gunfire and by bringing ashore supplies and the
reserve and garrison troops.
Meanwhile, other components of the expeditionary force con
verged on Okinawa. After a series of attacks on the Kyushu airfields
and shipping in the Inland Sea, Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher's fast
carriers began a heavy bombardment of Okinawa and nearby islands on
23 March and continued pounding the island for the next week.^^
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 8 , 10-11; Sortie and Cruising Orders— Okinawa, JLH Papers.
^^Commander Amphibious Group 12, Attack Order no. A 1202-45, p. 2, serial 00027 of 16 March 1945, JLH Papers (hereafter cited as Hall's Attack Order).
^^Commander Task Force 58, Report of Operations of Task Force Fifty-eight in Support of Landings at Okinawa, 14 March-28 May, pp. 3- 7, serial 00222 of 18 June 1945, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Mitscher's Action Report). J. J. Clark, with Clark G. Reynolds, Carrier Admiral (New York: David McKay Co., 1967), pp. 215-38, describes the activi ties of TG 58.1, commanded by Clark, during the campaign. The standard work on the fast carriers is Clark G. Reynolds, The Fast Carriers: The Forging of an Air Navy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968).
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Simultaneously, the Army Air Forces Twenty-first Bomber Command's
B-29s, based at Luzon, dealt blows on the Kyushu and Formosa air
bases and mined the Shimoneseki Straits to the Inland Sea, further
weakening the Japanese capabilities of providing air or naval support
in the Ryukyus,Also contributing to the pre-invasion strikes,
Britain's Pacific Fleet made its first appearance in Operation Iceberg
and, from 26 March onward, began striking at the airfields and shipping
58 at Sakishima Gunto, islands between Okinawa and Formosa.
An innovation in central Pacific warfare, the Amphibious
Support F o r c e , led by Admiral Blandy, bore the responsibility for
other preliminary operations. On 26 March, the Western Attack Group
landed the Seventy-seventh Infantry Division on the Kerama Retto
islands off the western coast of southern Okinawa. The quickly over
run territory provided a seaplane base and a fleet anchorage for repair
and resupply. An additional bonus for the invaders was the discovery
of more than 350 enemy suicide boats, intended for use against
^^Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds.. The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 5: The Pacific; Matterhorn to Nagasaki, June 1944 to August 1945 (Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 631 (hereafter cited as Craven and Cate, The Pacific; Matterhorn to Nagasaki).
Morison, Victory in the Pacific, pp. 103-7; Winton, Forgotten Fleet. pp. 111-15.
S^Turner to Conolly, n.d. [November 1944?], and Turner to Vice Adm. T. S. Wilkinson, 19 November 1944, Turner Papers, series I, dis cussed plans for this new type of command. Wilkinson to Turner, 7 December 1944, ibid., said there had been a similar set-up at Palau and at Leyte.
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American ships off Okinawa. Five days after the invasion of Kerama
Retto, the Seventy-seventh Division took Keise Shima, which then
served as an emplacement for two battalions of 155-mm. guns that
could bear on the southern coast of Okinawa eleven miles away.^^
Other elements of Blandy's support force began softening up
Okinawa. First Rear Admiral Alexander Sharp led his minesweepers on
a thorough sweep of the waters adjacent to the western, southern, and
eastern coasts of the island. After the sweepers came Rear Admiral
Morton L. Deyo's fire support ships, which began a steady bombardment
of the island on 25 March and moved closer to shore as sweepers com
pleted their tasks.Next, the underwater demolition teams, commanded
by Captain B. Hall Hanlon, began reconnoitering the Hagushi beaches on
29 March. During the next two days these brave swimmers returned to
clear the waters off the landing beaches of obstacles consisting of
large hardwood posts wedged into the sand and coral and interlaced
with barbed wire. The UDTs blew up about 2,700 of these posts with no
casualties to themselves— vastly different from the heavy losses
suffered by the UDTs of Normandy.To throw the enemy off guard as
^^Appleman et al., Okinawa. pp. 51-63.
^^CTF 52 (Amphibious Support Force), Action Report— Operations against Okinawa Gunto, pt. 1, sec. A, pp. 1-2, serial 053 of 1 May 1945, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Blandy's Action Report); CTF 54, Action Report— Bombardment and Occupation of Okinawa, pp. 1-2, 15-28, serial 0049 of 5 May 1945, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Deyo's Action Re p o r t ) . 62 Blandy’s Action Report, pt. 1, sec. A, p. 2; Deyo’s Action Report, p. 28. Fane and Moore, Naked Warriors, pp. 189-209, and
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to the true assault sites, a diversionary force, commanded by Rear
Admiral Jerauld Wright, carried the Second Marine Division to the
southern coast of Okinawa and feigned landings in that area.^^ By
31 March, Okinawa had been prepared as well as possible by these
preliminary activities. The week-long isolation of the island by
sea and air strength was novel for Hall, who was accustomed to little
or no prelanding bombardment in the European theater.
Hall's attack force moved into the transport area shortly
after 0500 on 1 April, and Reifsnider's force to the north, embarking
the Third Amphibious Corps with Geiger commanding, slid into position
at the same time. Reifsnider had carried the marines from their
staging position in the Guadalcanal-Purvis Bay-Russell Islands area.
Even the weather cooperated: a clear sky, a smooth sea, and little
wind augured well for the assault forces.To Hall, it was "a very
thrilling thing . . . to see these amphibious forces arriving from all
over the Pacific . . . coordinating and attacking right on ^ time
schedule which permitted no deviation.
Higgins and Phillips, Webfooted Warriors, pp. 54-76, contain colorful accounts of the exploits of the UDTs at Okinawa.
^^Morison, Victory in the Pacific, p. 154.
^^Teton Action Report, p. 2; Commander Amphibious Group 4 (for merly CTF 53), Report of Participation in the Capture of Okinawa Gunto, pt. 1, sec. A, p. 1, and pt. 3, pp. 2-12, serial 0252 of 20 July 1945, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Reifsnider's Action Report).
^^JLH Oral History, p. 267. For two brief accounts of the inva sion, see E. E. Paro, "Okinawa Operation," United States Naval Insti tute Proceedings 72 (January 1946):61-67; and M. D. Morris, Okinawa: A Tiger by the Tail (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1968), pp. 23-36.
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The Hagushi beaches that awaited the expeditionary force
stretched for nine thousand yards and were divided by the Bishi River.
Varying from one hundred to nine hundred yards in length and from ten
to forty-five yards in width, the beaches quickly rose to a low
coastal plain that provided excellent concealment potential for
defenders of the island. A coral reef paralleled the shore line,
except for a break at the mouth of the Bishi River, and presented a
barrier for landing craft. Consisting mainly of coral sand, the
beaches themselves seemed firm enough for vehicles, and most of the
beaches had an exit to the interior. Backing each beach was a thick
sea wall that naval gunfire had to demolish. Hall's attack force
beaches, south of the Bishi River, extended for less than five
thousand yards, which left little room for maneuvering such a large
fleet.
At 0600 on L-Day, the heavy fire support ships opened fire on
pre-arranged targets behind and flanking the beaches. Some of the
ships closed the beaches to twenty-five hundred yards. Thirty-five
minutes before H-Hour Turner passed control of the gunfire support
ships to Hall. Hall's force then saturated the beaches with ships'
bombardment and fire from the support craft which had preceded the
landing boat waves toward shore. The gunfire support ships pounded
their targets until H-plus-four-hour or until established shore fire
^^Appleman et al., Okinawa, p. 10.
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control parties requested a halt. Naval gunfire liaison officers,
embarked in follow-up LVT waves, were in a position to spot the fire
if the landings had been opposed. Hall felt that the practice of
maintaining heavy ships' fire until H-plus-four-hour was sound and
provided for continuing support until shore fire control parties had
set up communications ashore.
As the big guns blasted at the Japanese island. Turner's
flagship, the Eldorado, steamed past the Teton, and, undeterred by
splashes from enemy shore batteries, ran close to the beach. Jokingly,
Hall told Captain Tallman, skipper of the Teton, that he would be
relieved if he allowed Turner to get nearer than Hall to the beach.
At 0645, the Teton left the transport area for the line of departure,
about four thousand yards off shore, where she remained until noon.^®
From his vantage point. Hall watched the waves of attack and
landing craft head toward their assigned beaches. First the control
craft, flying the colors of their respective beaches, took their
stations near the line of departure; then the support craft, hurtling
mortar and rocket salvos, led the invasion force toward shore. As
the closely following LVT(A)s (amtracs), firing projectiles, made
their way to the target, five additional waves of LVTs carried tanks
and soldiers to the beaches. Just before touchdown, carrier planes
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 111-12.
^^Teton Action Report, p. 2; JLH interview, 13 July 1977; Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, 2:1091.
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strafed the beaches and dropped a last load of rockets. The forces
hit the nine assault beaches exactly on time: 0830. Later waves,
embarked in LCVPs, had to transfer the troops to LVTs which carried
them over the reef to the shore. Then the LCMs and LSMs, loaded with
amphibious tanks, discharged their waves off shore, and amphibian
tractors and DUKWs helped carry support troops and supplies over the
reef onto the beach. So far, the enemy reacted with only mortar
fire on two beaches and scattered fire elsewhere, and there were only
a few land mines to slow the army's progress. The ease of the landings
left everyone amazed.
Once ashore, assault regiments of the Seventh and Ninety-sixth
Divisions secured their beachheads, raced inland, and captured Kadena
airfield by 1000. Simultaneously, Reifsnider had put the Third
Amphibious Corps ashore in the northern attack sector; and the
leathernecks, encountering almost no opposition, quickly captured
Yontan airfield before noon.^^ By the end of L-Day, about sixty
thousand Tenth Army soldiers and marines had scampered across the
reef-fringed beaches and had established a beachhead fifteen thousand
yards wide and three-to-five thousand yards deep. The mysterious
lack of Japanese resistance remained unexplained; the invaders had
^^Hall's Attack Order, annexes B and I; Hall's Action Report, p. 28; Morison, Victory in the Pacific, pp. 143-44, 149-52.
^^Reifsnider's Action Report, pt. 2, sec. C, pp. 1, 3.
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anticipated over sixty-thousand enemy defenders on Okinawa.Through
out the day a few Kamikaze (suicide) planes flew in, and, during the
night, more planes attacked the ships.
While the ground forces made steady progress on L-Day, at 1400
Hall's attack force began unloading with all possible speed. Hall's
aerologist mistakenly predicted a heavy surf for the next afternoon,
so the admiral pushed his transports to unload at maximum rates. LSMs,
LCTs, LCMs, LCVPs, and pontoon barges shuttled men and supplies from
the big transports to shore as fast as army shore parties could clear
space on the beaches. Unloading of transports not retired to night
anchorages continued throughout the hours of darkness. Nevertheless,
Hall could not unload the heavily laden transports and LSTs as rapidly
as he had cleared similar ships, filled only with personnel and a few
vehicles, at Normandy. It was not until 5 April that he could send
twelve large transports from the southern Hagushi anchorage, with
eight more ships leaving the next day and a few more each succeeding day.72
On shore, the First Marine Division speedily crossed the
island and, by 3 April, had reached Nakagusuka Bay on the eastern
coast— seven days ahead of Buckner's plan of attack. Similarly, the
Sixth Marine Division ran far ahead of schedule and pushed northward
^^Frank and Shaw, Victory and Occupation, pp. 117-18; Appleman et al., Okinawa, pp. 74-76.
72 Hall's Action Report, pp. 28, 33-35.
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to secure the Nakodamari-Ishikawa line at the base of the narrow
isthmus separating northern and southern Okinawa. The Seventh
Infantry Division also had sent units at breakneck speed across the
island to -capture posts overlooking Nakagusuka Bay on 2 April. The
Ninety-sixth Division had run into more serious problems, however; it
met some enemy resistance in its charge across the island. General
Hodge left the Teton on 5 April and established his command ashore,
signifying the end of the assault stage of Iceberg. That same day
the entire Twenty-fourth Corps, which had turned toward the south,
had reached a line extending across the island that it could not
cross for two weeks. The Japanese had dug into the southern end of
7 0 Okinawa, and now the tough fighting began.
The Buildup and Continuing Operations
The slowdown in the advance of the Tenth Army was not the sole
deterrent to American victory, for, by 4 April, other factors turned
against the invasion forces, beginning with the weather. A frontal
passage caused an increase in the wind to thirty knots, heavy rains,
and swells in the choppy sea. The winds continued until 7 April when
they abated only to pick up again on the tenth and gust to thirty-five
knots. Many of the landing craft, having no sheltered anchorage,
battered against the coral reef and against each other and sustained
heavy damage. Unloading stopped and resumed and stopped again during
73 Ibid., p. 18; Appleman et al., Okinawa, pp. 76-79.
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the unsettled weather,
Not only did mother nature and Japanese defensive forces
hamper the progress of the invasion, but the enemy made other deter
mined efforts to defend the island doorstep to their homeland. In a
fanatical spate of kamikaze raids, which slowly intensified in the
early days of the assault, the enemy sent hundreds of young pilots,
often strapped into their seats with enough fuel for a one-way trip,
on missions of crashing into American shipping.This form of warfare
was new to Hall; but Turner, from his experience in the Pacific, had
anticipated the suicide planes and had made elaborate defensive plans
to thwart them. He assigned a ring of destroyers, supported by LCIs
acting as gunboats and LSTs, forty to sixty miles from the transport
area. The fighter director teams on these radar picket ships would
then call on combat air patrol (CAP) fighters to engage the kamikazes
^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 31, 33-37, 97.
^^Bernard Millot, Divine Thunder : The Life and Death of the Kamikazes (New York: McCall Publishing Co., 1971), describes the organization and activities of the kamikaze force. For the viewpoint of former Japanese naval officers, see Rikihei Inoguchi and Tadashi Nakajima, "The Kamikaze Attack Corps," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 79 (September 1953);933-45; and Toshiyuki Yokoi, "Kamikazes and the Okinawa Campaign," ibid. 80 (May 1954):505-13. In an early article, Paul W. Martin, "Kamikaze!", ibid. 72 (August 1946): 1055-57, pointed out that the Japanese had everything to gain from trying to destroy the U.S. fleet and that the raids were not a desperation move by a nearly defeated enemy. Cf., Baldwin, Battles Lost and Won, p. 381, who calls the attacks acts of "ingenious desperation."
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before they reached the assault forces.Of the Japanese planes that
slipped through the radar-CAP screen, many crashed into vessels in the
picket line; so the valiant destroyers bore the brunt of the kamikaze
raids.
Although the raids in the forms of suicide, conventional, or
Baka bombs (jet-propelled bombs dropped from planes and guided by
human pilots), continued the whole time Hall was anchored at Hagushi,
the most intense raid occurred on 6 April, when about four hundred
planes flew from Kyushu to attack the American invaders. As usual, the
picket ships absorbed most of the blows; but, by late afternoon,
several enemy planes flew in over the anchorage. Anti-aircraft fire
from ship and shore batteries shot down five of the craft. Unfor
tunately, during the height of the attack and the defensive fire, two
78 friendly fighters were mistakenly hit. To strike at the home air
fields of the kamikazes, the Twenty-first Bomber Command staged
^ Commander Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet: Suicide Plane Attacks, serial 0067 of 5 February 1945, OA, NHD; Turner's Action Report, pt. 2, pp. 16-18; Hoyt, Nimitz and His Admirals, p. 480.
^^Eyewitness accounts of the vicissitudes of the destroyers include Arnold S. Lott, Brave Ship, Brave Men (Indianapolis: Bobbs- Merrill Co., 1964), and J. Davis Scott, "No Hiding Place— Off Okinawa," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 83 (November 1957): 1208-13.
78 Hall's Action Report, p. 82; Turner's Action Report, pt. 2, p. 18; CTF 54 (ComCruDiv 5) Action Report, Capture of Okinawa Gunto, Phase II, 5-28 May, appendix II, pp. 15-16, serial 0022 of 4 June 1945, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as McCormick's Action Report).
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numerous B-29 raids on bases at Kyushu and Shikoku.
The kamikaze raids continued day after day. During an attack
on 12 April a plane crashed into the kingpost of an ammunition ship,
the S.S. Minot Victory, anchored three thousand yards astern of the
Teton. The plane's nameplate tore off on the kingpost, and one of
Hall's officers found it, nailed it to a board, and presented it to
the admiral. He kept the souvenir. During these weeks, one ship in
Hall's command, the S.S. Canada Victory, was sunk and thirteen other
ships were damaged by the suicide planes. The navy suffered far
higher casualties, mostly from the kamikazes, than in any Pacific
campaign; naval casualties for the entire operation were over 4,900
men killed or missing and another 4,824 wounded. In the initial
weeks of the campaign naval losses exceeded those of the ground
. 80 forces.
Aside from the activities of the picket ships, fighter planes,
and B-29s, Hall's force relied on anti-aircraft fire and smoke to
0*1 deter the kamikazes. To be effective, ships' fire had to hit the
low-flying planes, which often flew in with the sun behind them to
blind ships' gunners, so that the aircraft would either splash or
79 Craven and Cate, The Pacific; Matterhorn to Nagasaki, pp. 632- 33.
®*^Hall's Action Report, pp. 83-87; JLH Oral History, pp. 271-74; Morison, Victory in the Pacific, p. 282.
^^McCormick's Action Report, appendix II, p. 13, criticized Turner for not ordering drills or exercises to prepare for the suicide p l a n e s .
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explode in mid-air. The most extensively used defensive device against
the kamikazes, especially at night when fighter support was limited,
was the making of smoke. Hall had included smoke plans and diagrams
in his attack order, and the responsible ships and boats executed these
plans with varying degrees of success. Generally, smoke boats (LSMs
and LCV(P)s) laid their screen windward of the Hagushi anchorage or
tried to shield vessels isolated outside the transport area. Hall
instituted a smoke patrol around the anchorage every evening to be
certain that ships were in their berths and could be screened by smoke.
Although Hall had acquired additional smoke generators at Samar, in
the Philippines, before he sailed, the short supplies of pots, fog
oil, floats, and spare parts for generators hampered the effectiveness
of the efforts to hide the force from enemy planes. Sometimes there
was not enough fog oil for the next day's operations. It was not
until the S.S. Clovis Victory, with 34,000 drums of fog oil, and two
LSTs, with smoke pots, and floats arrived on 19 May that Hall was
Q O assured of adequate smoke-making paraphernalia.
In addition to short supplies. Hall had other problems afloat
with poorly operating boats, defective generators, and crews untrained
in making smoke. On shore, the operation of smoke generators used to
protect the vessels on the reef suffered from a rapid turnover of
untrained personnel and maintenance and breakdown problems. Because
82 Hall's Attack Order, annex H; Hall's Action Report, pp. 130-31, 187; JLH Oral History, p. 273.
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the making of smoke was so crucial to defenses, Hall thought there
should have been army chemical warfare experts, under command of a
naval beachmaster, to handle the generators ashore. Afloat, more care
to proper training and rehearsal of the men responsible for smoke
making and more boats assigned for this purpose would have simplified
83 the execution of smoke plans.
In spite of the smoke screens and defensive measures, the
continuous raids by the kamikaze planes took their toll not only of
ships and lives but of the morale of Hall's bluejackets. Getting
shot at frightening, and Hall believed that anyone who said that
he was not afraid under fire was either a liar or a fool. But men
have many ways of lessening the tensions of warfare, and most of
Hall's gallant sailors showed only an eager desire to win the battle.
Some of the men would joke with a buddy that "his turn was next."
Hall himself tried to appear undisturbed^^ and often hid his own
anxiety by pacing the deck and lighting another cigarette. He was more
85 concerned about the safety of his men than about himself.
8 3 Hall's Action Report, pp. 131-32; Hall's Report of Smoke
Generator Operations, Hagushi Beaches, Okinawa, serial 0051 of 8 May 1945, OA, NHD.
^^He apparently succeeded. One of his staff referred to him as "a tower of imperturbability during the difficult 'kamikaze' days of Okinawa." A. V. Leslie to Rear Adm. J. A. Briggs, 28 November 1958, enclosed in Briggs to JLH, 10 December 1958, Correspondence: 1958 file, JLH Papers.
^^JLH interview, 13 July 1977.
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Although the ships took a severe pounding from the enemy
planes, the navy had no engagements with the Japanese fleet, Japan's
desperation move of assigning the Yamato, the largest battleship in
the world, a cruiser, and eight destroyers the mission of fighting
the American fleet at Okinawa quickly ended on 7 April when Mitscher's
carrier planes sank the Yamato, the cruiser, and several destroyers.
The action ended any possible Japanese intervention by sea.^^
Of more immediate concern to Hall's task force were the suicide
boats. Based in Naha harbor, which was still in enemy hands in
southern Okinawa, the small one-way boats began hitting at the
American ships on 8 April, when the transport Starr was struck but
not damaged. The next day the destroyer Charles J. Badger took a hit
and was disabled. Hall quickly established the "flycatcher" patrol
to illuminate the coast around Naha harbor at night, to harass hiding
places of the boats, and to bombard the nearby airstrips twice a day.
The flycatchers succeeded in stopping almost all of the suicide boats,
but one sneaked through the patrol and hit and slightly damaged the
S.S. Bozeman Victory on 28 April. During the next few days Hall sent
ships on successful search-and-destroy missions to wipe out any
remaining boat pens around Naha harbor and to try to end the menace
of suicide boats. To improve future operations, the admiral thought
86 CTF 58 to Commander 5th Fleet, 7 April 1945, FX03 (Ops Div.), series III, Iceberg; Mitscher's Action Report, pp. 8-9. For an exciting description of this battle, see Morison, Victory in the Pacific, pp. 199-209.
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that prelanding bombardment of detected hiding places and postlanding
army assistance would be n e c e s s a r y . ^7
As the land and sea warfare continued, Hall's force unloaded
men and supplies over the open beaches as rapidly as possible. During
the first few days after the assault began. Hall handled the unloading
over the southern beaches, and Reifsnider was responsible for the
northern beaches. On 5 April Hall assumed control of supplying both
beaches, because Reifsnider was to command the later attack on le 88 Shima. When the assault convoys left the area, a naval garrison
beach battalion replaced the beach parties on both the northern and
southern beaches. The beachmaster. Commander Lawrence C. Leaver, com
manded both of these battalions and effectively controlled the naval
89 part of the unloading operations.
To get the men and supplies ashore. Turner had ordered the
establishment of two boat pools made up of vessels attached to the
assault convoys and released to the pools when the transports left.
These craft— LCTs, LCM(3)s, LCVPs, and pontoon barges— along with
LSMs, handled the major part of the unloading. The LCMs and LCVPs
alone could get across the reef barrier, and then only at flood tide.
87 Hall's Action Report, pp. 35, 36, 50, 127; Turner's Action Report, pt. 5, sec. C, p. 16; Morison, Victory in the Pacific, pp. 217- 18.
88 Hall's Action Report, p. 14; Reifsnider's Action Report, pt. 2, sec. C, p. 2.
89 Hall's Action Report, p. 169.
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to unload directly onto the beaches. The larger LSTs, LSMs, and LCTs
could beach at the reef, unload bulk cargo into DUKWs and LVTs, and
run vehicles onto the reef at low tide. To facilitate the discharge
of cargoes and vehicles, several piers and a six--lane causeway were
quickly constructed, and some of the pontoon barges were equipped with
cranes to assist with bulk loads. A number of problems arose with the
boat pool arrangement, however. Many of the craft were in poor oper
ating condition when Hall received them and had to be replaced by boats
in subsequent convoys. There was always an inadequate number of LCVPs
and LCP(L)s to handle all the necessary errand runs that occur in a
large anchorage. When the craft were operational and engaged in convoy
unloading, they received their lighterage assignments twenty-four hours
in advance and sometimes had not discharged their previous cargoes
before being scheduled to pick up more supplies.
In addition to boat pool problems, more difficulties arose with
the army and marine shore parties. In the northern sector, the marines
had moved inland so rapidly and took with them the trucks and DUKWs
normally used to help on the beaches. This shortage of transportation,
coupled with inadequate manpower assigned to the shore parties, caused
delays in unloading the landing craft. Hall soon sent Commander
Arthur J. Benline, his LCT and pontoon barge group leader, to talk
with the army shore party commander about getting the army to help on
^*^Ibid., pp. 170-74, 191-92; Appleman et al., Okinawa, pp. 79- 80.
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the northern beaches. After a meeting on Turner's flagship attended
by all commanders connected with unloading, the Tenth Army, through
Major General Fred C. Wallace's First Engineer Special Brigade, assumed
shore party activities on all of the Hagushi beaches except the most
northern Nago Wan on 9 April. The movement of supplies to inland dumps
proceeded more expeditiously, but chronic shortages of men and equip
ment and a lack of training of many members of the shore parties slowed
the unloading of later convoys. At no time could shore parties unload
the cargo as quickly as the navy could send it in. Certainly this was
not a smoothly running organization such as General Hoge had established
91 at Normandy.
On 25 April Hall conferred with Wallace, inspected the beaches,
and suggested the use of additional cranes, men, and vehicles to hasten
the movement of the ever-swelling volume of supplies and of employing
more LVTs and crane barges at the reef barrier. He also recommended
setting up additional dumps between the shore and inland dumps, con
solidating the Nago Wan beach control under Wallace's command, and
modifying the dispersion of ammunition. After securing Buckner's
approval. Hall implemented these changes, which eased the logistical
92 difficulties.
^^Turner's Action Report, pt. 5, sec. I, p. 25; Hall's Action Report, p. 171. Cf., Morison, Victory in the Pacific, p. 174, who said the unloading was "very smooth."
^^Turner's Action Report, pt. 5, sec. I, p. 29; Frank and Shaw, Victory and Occupation, pp. 160, 241-42; Nichols and Shaw, Okinawa, p. 174.
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Other difficulties arose in the transferring of men and supplies
from ship to shore. Occasionally the troops needed certain items in the
ships, and Hall had to resort to priority unloading to meet these
requests, in spite of his careful reorganization of the loading proce
dures. Such selective unloading, rather than completely emptying the
vessels as they arrived, caused unwanted slowdowns in the departures
of the supply ships and exposed them unnecessarily to the danger of
93 air attacks. At other times some of the ships' masters complained
to Hall that army stevedores deliberately slowed down the unloading
94 to make the work seem more like a "vacation."
Nevertheless, the unloading of supplies continued unabated
across the open beaches at Hagushi, and Hall delivered an unprecedented
amount of additional force supplies. From L-Day until 31 May, Hall
unloaded 481 ships containing 1,265,865 measurement tons (421,466
weight tons) of assault, maintenance, and garrison cargo and handled a
95 landing force and a garrison force totaling 451,866.
The performance of landing craft and ships during the assault
and buildup phases varied. The LSTs, such exciting additions to the
fleets in the Mediterranean, were now routinely expected to turn in
93 Turner's Action Report, pt. 5, sec. F, p. 11. Turner objected to the shipping being used as "floating warehouses." Adm. Spruance was critical of the army for being so slow because it needlessly exposed the ships. See Buell, Quiet Warrior, p. 358.
^^Edward M. Foster to JLH, 2 May 1945, and John C. Huntington to JLH, 23 April 1945, Correspondence: 1945 file, JLH Papers.
^^Hall's Action Report, p. 174; Turner's Action Report, pt. 1, p . 5.
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first-rate performances, and they did not disappoint Hall. More of
these ships took part in the Okinawa invasion than in earlier Pacific
operations. In addition to carrying men and supplies from Leyte to
Okinawa in the assault force, the LSTs operated in subsequent convoys
and also served as hospital ships. Faster and easier to empty than
the transports, the LSTs could unload directly onto the reef at
Okinawa or onto pontoon causeways, thereby saving the time and labor
96 of moving cargo to smaller craft.
Another familiar landing ship, the LSM, continued to be valuable
in carrying tanks, in unloading the big transports, in functioning as
patrol craft, and in serving as flagships for lesser commanders. Many
of them suffered structural damage from lying on the coral reef, so
Hall ordered them to be unloaded only over pontoon causeways. He did
not think that these ocean-going ships should be used in the future
for lighterage: this practice was wasteful, since there were numerous
97 other smaller craft designed for ship-to-shore unloading.
The LCTs showed their worth in unloading the transports. As
part of the boat pool they continued to provide an effective transfer
service although they were not used to maximum capacity. Other craft
in the boat pool did not turn in as good a showing. Many of the LCMs
reported for duty in poor operating condition and could not receive
^^Morison, Victory in the Pacific, p. 141; Hall’s Action Report, p. 15.
97 Hall’s Action Report, pp. 15, 171.
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adequate repairs at the anchorage. Often their crews were inexperienced
or careless in handling the craft. While most LCMs were engaged in
unloading, others worked effectively as salvage vessels off each beach.
Many LCVPs had the same operational shortcomings as the LCMs. Used
primarily as "running boats" in the Hagushi anchorage, the LCVPs also
served as smoke-makers and patrol craft. In the latter job, the craft
lacked sufficient speed, maneuverability, seaworthiness, and armament
go to be effective. They were not designed as patrol craft.
The LVT(A)s (amphibian tractors) led the attack force ashore
on L-Day. The amtrac had been developed to meet the demands of Pacific
warfare and could swim ashore, albeit sluggishly, and travel with ease
over coral reefs and soft beaches. At the same time, the amtracs
could maintain machine gun or ordnance fire. The less heavily armored
LVTs, launched from LSTs, had carried the assault waves to the Okinawa
beaches. The amtracs, long used in the Pacific, were new to Hall's
99 experience.
As the various landing craft and vehicles handled the ship-to-
shore transfer of men and equipment, Reifsnider landed the Seventy-
seventh Infantry Division on le Shima on 16 April. The small island,
lying off the west coast of the Motobu Peninsula, had an airfield that
was important for defensive purposes. The army secured the island
after five days of fighting. Unfortunately, the famous war
98 Ibid., pp. 171-72, 191-92.
99 Appleman et al., Okinawa, p. 70.
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correspondent, Ernie Pyle, was killed on le Shima.
After Reifsnider left the area on 5 April, Hall assumed control
of all ships in the Hagushi anchorage. His Southern Attack Force was
dissolved on 18 April; his command became Task Group 51.22; and he
then served as senior officer present afloat at the Hagushi anchorage.
Meanwhile, the Tenth Army had reached a standstill in its drive
toward the southern end of Okinawa. The mystery of the unresisted
landings soon became clear. The Japanese, apparently chary of
subjecting their defensive force to the onslaught of naval gunfire, had
deployed their Thirty-second Army of over 100,000 men in well-fortified
areas north of Naha, Shuri, and Yonabaru, and intended to fight their
102 battle in this region. After Hodge left the Teton and assumed com
mand of the Twenty-fourth Corps ashore on 5 April, his troops reached
the outskirts of the Japanese defense perimeter on 9 April, and the
American army came to a halt, For the next two months the corps,
reinforced by the Twenty-seventh Infantry Division and joined by
parts of the Third Amphibious Corps, inched its way southward and
103 doggedly pushed at the entrenched enemy.
^^^Reifsnider's Action Report, pt. 2, sec. D, pp. 4-6.
^^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 14, 16.
^^^McMillian, ’’Development of Naval Gunfire Support," p. 15. 103 Appleman et al., Okinawa, pp. 91-96; Hall’s Action Report, pp. 18-21. Robert Debs Heinl, Jr., Soldiers of the Sea: The United States Marine Corps, 1775-1962 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1962), pp. 498-99, 506, is highly critical of Buckner for continuing frontal attacks instead of using the Third Corps to stage an amphibious assault on the southern tip of the island (hereafter cited as Heinl, Soldiers of the S e a ) .
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During these weeks naval gunfire support contributed to the
success of the campaign. After the prelanding bombardment and the
initial assault, naval gunfire support quickly fell into a predesigned
plan. Routinely one or two heavy ships responded to calls for deep
support from each corps; a cruiser or a battleship handled requests
from each division for gunfire; a destroyer and one other ship covered
regimental requests for fire. In addition to functioning as mobile
artillery by shelling designated targets, gunfire support ships provided
night illumination, using star shell, that often revealed Japanese
preparations for counterattacks. The support of Tenth Army operations
kept the navy's fleet off Okinawa longer than in any other Pacific
invasion, and this great armada expended more ammunition in Operation
Iceberg than in previous island campaigns.Spotting of naval gunfire
fell to air spotters, shore fire control parties, and during the assault
by naval gunfire liaison officers in LVTs off shore— the latter a
fulfillment of Hall's recommendation after Normandy.
In one especially spectacular example of the accuracy of naval
fire, the old battleship Mississippi helped the Tenth Army to complete
its attack on the Shuri stronghold. Unknown to the Americans, the
the Japanese had begun withdrawing from heavily defended Shuri on
^Appleman et al., Okinawa, pp. 253-55; Morison, Victory in the Pacific, pp. 240, 245-47; Deyo's Action Report, pp. 34-75; McCormick's Action Report, pp. 3-4.
^^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 112, 120, 124; supra, p. 233.
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22 May, leaving only skeleton defensive forces behind, and had deter
mined to make another stand farther south. Navy spotter planes
finally observed these straggling columns, and naval gunfire and air
strikes inflicted many casualties. Not realizing the extent of the
enemy withdrawal, U.S. soldiers and marines pressed forward to try to
capture Shuri castle, the center of the stronghold and also the old
capitol of the entire Ryukyus.^*^^ Hodge called Hall ashore to corps
headquarters and requested the admiral to turn a sixteen-inch-gun
battleship on the ancient fortress. Hall replied that twenty-five
thousand yards was the nearest he could bring a battleship to shore
because of the coral reefs, then there was the additional yardage to
the castle. Such a long distance would look like a flyspeck on a gun's
range scale. Nevertheless, Hall promised to try.^^^
No sixteen-inch-gun battleship was available, so the Mississippi,
commmanded by Captain H. J. Redfield, undertook the task with her
fourteen-inch guns. Given three days to complete the assignment, the
battleship turned her main batteries against the target and on 25 May
began a steady bombardment. The skies remained overcast, so the shore
fire control party provided the spotting. By 27 May the Mississippi
had destroyed the north and east walls of the castle and two ammunition
dumps. On 29 May the marines entered the castle, and the Seventy-seventh
^^^Appleman et al., Okinawa, pp. 393, 396,
^^^JLH Oral History, pp. 268-69; JLH interview, 13 July 1977.
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Division headquarters acknowledge that the "murderous fire" delivered
by the Mississippi had made the American victory possible.Hodge
later sent Hall photographs of the demolished twenty-foot-thick walls;
and Marine Major General Pedro A. Del Valle, commander of the First
Marine Division, stated that the bombardment of Shuri castle was the
109 most accurate main battery fire for his division in the entire war.
Other tributes to naval gunfire support sprang from various
sources; even Japanese prisoners said that naval gunfire, the most
feared of American weapons, broke down the defensive positions on
Okinawa. Both Hall and Turner noted the change in attitude of some army
commanders regarding the effectiveness of naval fire support during the
Okinawa operation.When the island was finally secured. General
Geiger reflected the admiration of the Third Amphibious Corps:
Never has this Corps had better gunfire support. The uniformly excellent performance of ships supporting us speaks well for the standards of gunnery in our Navy as well as for the concern of personnel afloat for the problems of the landing force. I desire especially to express our thanks for the illumination delivered. When the ships illuminated, the Marines issued lead passes for many Nips to join honorable ancestors.m
108 U.S.S. Mississippi Action Report— Bombardment Operations against Okinawa Shima during Period 17-27 May 1945, pp. 1-7, serial 0124 of 17 July 1945, OA, NHD.
109 Isely and Crowl, U.S. Marines and Amphibious War, p. 559.
^^^Hall's Action Report, pp. 15, 117, 119-20; Turner's Action Report, pt. 5, sec. C, pp. 12, 22.
Ill ComPhibPac, forwarding C.G. 3rd Phib. Corps Message, 27 June 1945, Amphibious Messages file, JLH Papers.
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In addition to the booming guns of the fire support ships and
craft, the aircraft operating in Operation Iceberg performed valuable
offensive and defensive duties, Planes from Mitscher’s fast carriers
and from Rear Admiral C, T, Durgin’s support carriers carried out the
bombing of Okinawa throughout the campaign, acted as combat air patrol
and antisubmarine patrol for the entire attack force, and helped spot
naval gunfire. When the airfields at Yontan and Kadena were repaired,
112 marine planes provided land-based support from these fields.
During the first week of the operation Captain Maxwell F.
Leslie, of Hall's staff, commanded the air support control unit and
exercised direct control from the Teton of all aircraft supporting the
Twenty-fourth Corps. This procedure, standard in the Pacific, made
the conduct of the amphibious assault far more coordinated and effective
than any that Hall had previously commanded. The force could receive
a request for air support and, within minutes, have a plane responding.
What a difference from the Mediterranean and Normandy! Hall had
pleaded in vain for control of air support in those operations, for
an attack force commander must control all elements of the assault.
Control of the air support went to the landing force air support
control unit after the Twenty-fourth Corps headquarters was firmly
113 established ashore.
112 Mitscher's Action Report, passim, and pt. 2, p. 1; Appleman et al., Okinawa, p. 255; Heinl, Soldiers of the Sea, p. 502.
113 Hall's Action Report, p. 126; JLH interview, 16 July 1977.
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Air support, as well as all other components of an assault
force, depended on efficient communications; and, during the Okinawa
campaign, the communications system was generally adequate. With his
usual efficiency. Captain Mailing, Hall's communications officer, had
drawn up highly satisfactory plans for the operation. A few bugs
appeared, and the force experienced some delays from circuits overloaded
with unimportant traffic. Another difficulty sprang from over-reliance
on radio telephones, which led to security breaches as the enemy could
clearly hear intercepted plain talk messages, but the radio teletype
system functioned well. The force could never obtain a sufficient
number of SCR 610 radio sets, which were necessary for guiding the
numerous smoke boats in their essential tasks. Of the visual methods,
the flashing light was used more than the semaphore; and the infra-red
NAN beacon proved more serviceable than in other Pacific operations.
Various types of radar, the core of the picket ships' defense against
enemy aircraft, turned in good performances.
Hall's flagship, Teton, a new ACC, was satisfactory as the
center of communications for the amphibious force but was not as well
equipped as the Ancon had been. The ship also acted as a supply and
repair ship for electronic equipment of ships and craft in the Hagushi
anchorage. Hall's great complaint about the Teton was her slow speed.
She had scarcely enough power to make fifteen knots and had difficulty
114 Hall's Action Report, pp. 133-48.
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keeping up with the transports.
Another vital ingredient in an amphibious success story was the
command relationship. Most of Hall's contacts with army leaders
involved Twenty-fourth Corps staff, rather than the division leaders.
At no time did he experience any difficulties in planning or executing
the joint venture. Hodge, whom Hall considered an outstanding soldier,
showed no symptoms of the doubts that plagued the landing force com
manders on board Hall's flagships off Sicily and Normandy.The joint
commanders had resolved their command problems early in the central
Pacific, beginning with the Guadalcanal campaign; thereafter, no one
questioned the prerogative of the assault force commander to retain
control of all services until the commanding general landed and assumed
^ 117 co mm and .
Equally as outstanding for an amphibious assault was the
performance of Richmond Kelly Turner, who exercised general command of
the amphibious forces at Okinawa. His professional conduct of Operation
Iceberg reinforced Hall's own belief that Turner was one of the
118 greatest combat officers of all naval history.
Turner's superior. Admiral Nimitz, had visited the Hagushi
115 Ibid., p. 11; Teton Action Report, p. 28; JLH interview. 16 July 1977.
116 JLH Oral History, p. 277; JLH interviews, 2, 6 , and 16 July 1977.
117 Blandy, "Command Relations," p. 577.
^^^JLH interview, 16 July 1977.
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area during the campaign and had arrived on 22 April, just in time for
the evening's entertainment: a kamikaze raid. Nimitz had dinner on
Spruance's flagship, the battleship New Mexico, and toured the beaches
the next day. Before another month had passed, Nimitz, aware of the
constant stress of the kamikaze raids, relieved his three top commanders
at Okinawa: on 17 May Vice Admiral Harry W. Hill replaced Turner; and
several days later. Vice Admiral John S. McCain relieved Mitscher,
119 and Admiral William F. Halsey took over from Spruance. The Fifth
Fleet became the Third Fleet, and Hall's command became Task Group 31.22
and senior officer present afloat at the Hagushi anchorage.
As these changes took place, the army's progress in subduing
Okinawa continued. Following the breakthrough in the Shuri area, to
which naval gunfire had contributed so much, the Tenth Army pressed
southward, gradually squeezing the Japanese into a smaller and smaller
area. By 8 June an estimated seventy thousand of the enemy had been
killed. The Japanese rarely surrendered; they had to be dug out of
their caves and underground defenses or shot. Hall had always pre
dicted that Japanese soldiers would fight to the death. On 18 June
Japanese gunfire loosened some coral, which struck and killed General
Buckner; Hall felt that the American army had lost a brave and gallant
leader. Only four days later Okinawa was safely in American hands.
Hall did not remain for the finishing touches to Operation
119 E. P. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1976), pp. 374, 376 (hereafter cited as Potter, Nimitz).
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Iceberg. Relieved on 8 June by Rear Admiral Calvin H. Cobb, Hall hauled
down his flag in the Teton and flew to Manila the next day. The
amphibious forces had to begin preparation for still another attack--
on the Japanese home islands.
The amphibious assault on Okinawa was for Hall a different kind
of operation. War in the central Pacific did not involve combined
American and British forces, except for the presence of the relatively
small and separate British carrier force at Okinawa, and the complexi
ties of coalition warfare did not interfere with operational procedures.
Commanding one of the two attack forces in the expeditionary force.
Hall generally followed the tactical methods already established by
Turner in his march across the central Pacific, which in many ways
contrasted with Hall’s earlier experiences. New for Hall was the week
of preliminary preparation of the target by Mitscher’s Fast Carrier
Force and Blandy’s Amphibious Support Force. Surprise was less
important in assaulting an isolated island than a continental land
mass. The preinvasion bombing of airfields and shipping by the Army
Air Forces and by British planes were similar to operations in Europe.
Like Normandy, but differing from Hall's Mediterranean cam
paigns, the assault occurred in daylight. The size of the entire
naval attack force— about twelve hundred ships and craft— was far
smaller than the five thousand-ship fleet sent to Normandy. The
number of troops landed— over 2,000,000 at Normandy and about 450,000
at Okinawa— made the largest of the central Pacific campaigns more
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comparable to Hall's Mediterranean assaults. The composition of those
troops was novel for Hall. In the European theater the army served
as the landing force, while in the Pacific both soldiers and marines
were involved. Different also was the practice of continuing naval
gunfire bombardment until H-plus-four-hour although the tactic of the
big fire support ships' closing the beaches had already been done in
Europe. Reminiscent of Sicily, naval gunfire played a role throughout
the land campaign at Okinawa, not merely knocking out specific targets
in the early phases of the assault. New to Hall were the kamikaze and
suicide boat attacks, the complete lack of enemy resistance on the
beaches, and the coral reef surrounding the shore and necessitating
slightly different landing and unloading procedures and equipment. The
assignment of carriers to permit naval command of air support during
the assault, a feature which Hall had consistently urged in his earlier
operations, had become standard in Turner's amphibious force. Armored
divisions, vital in continental campaigns, were not used in the central
Pacific.
Similar to some of Hall's previous campaigns, communications
had reached a perfected stage and presented few difficulties for the
expeditionary force at Okinawa. A prolonged buildup phase, like
Normandy, made Hall's presence at the Hagushi anchorage necessary, and,
again, the use of a headquarters ship such as the Teton enabled him
to remain in the area. Matching the proficiency developed earlier,
naval gunfire support turned in a magnificent performance, as did most
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of the various amphibious landing ships, craft, and vehicles. Problems
with command relationships did not occur either at Turner’s or Hall's
echelons. Unfortunately like the Mediterranean campaigns, unloading
skills had not reached the high degree of effectiveness found at
Normandy. The smaller Pacific assaults had not required the vast
quantities of supplies needed for prolonged land campaigns and had not
generated a more professional management of the shore parties.
120 Altogether, Hall considered the Okinawa invasion a "great operation."
Hall's own part in the conquest of Okinawa rested on his amphib
ious knowledge acquired in earlier campaigns. One of the very few
assault force commanders to serve in that capacity in both the European
and Pacific theaters, he was a vital link between the two areas. Basing
his training program on his experience as commander of the Eighth and
Eleventh Amphibious Forces, he modified his training procedures at
Leyte to meet the requirements of the Twenty-fourth Corps--refresher
training, followed by the rehearsal and the critical evaluation. Hall
transferred some of the knowledge gained in Europe about combat loading
the transports and organizing the transport squadrons into assault
and follow-up divisions. As the tactical commander of the Southern
Attack Force, Hall's abilities fitted into Turner's well-run organiza
tion. He handled the approach, assault, naval gunfire support, and
unloading processes efficiently and calmly. Later, Hall received a
120 JLH Oral History, p. 267.
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Gold Star in lieu of a second navy Distinguished Service Medal for the
Okinawa campaign. The accompanying citation credited him with being
"in large measure responsible for the success of his Task Force in
reducing Japanese resistance and in providing effective support for our
ground forces as they advanced against tremendous odds to capture this
121 vital hostile stronghold with a minimum of personnel losses. ..."
General Hodge tried, unsuccessfully, to secure an army Distinguished
Service Medal for Hall, but the army would not award a comparable
decoration for the same operation. Writing to Hall about the award,
Hodge professed, "I still think you are the best sailor I ever served
with, and when I see General MacArthur in a few days. I'm going to
talk to him on the subject of finding a period where you served the
122 Army while the Navy wasn't looking."
In the larger framework of the conduct of the Pacific war.
Operation Iceberg moved American forces forward in the final step of
the campaign to carry the fighting to the Japanese homeland. Okinawa
would be able to serve as a base for operations in the China Sea, for
the attack on Japan, and for further weakening of Japanese sea and
air communications.It was the "England of the Pacific"— an advanced
121 Citation for Gold Star in lieu of second Distinguished Service Medal, JLH Papers.
TOO Hodge to -JLH, 1 August 1948, Correspondence: 1946-1951 file, JLH Papers.
123 Turner's Action Report, pt. 1, sec. A, p. 7.
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base to carry the war f o r w a r d . ^^4 the navy, the masterful handling
and synchronization of the diverse and complex elements of the assault
at Okinawa brought the art of amphibious warfare in the Pacific one
step closer to perfection. No enemy target was safe from a determined,
aggressive, American attack. The Japanese defensive tactics of not
opposing the landings but digging into the interior were in themselves
tributes to American amphibious capability.
Strategically, the Okinawa invasion represented the successful
conclusion of the triple-headed attack to weaken the Japanese Empire.
Following the pattern of numerous offensive campaigns to reverse
Japanese expansion in the southwest and central Pacific, American
planners had charted Operation Iceberg as an essential move to squeeze
the perimeters of the dwindling territory held by the Japanese. The
victory at Okinawa brought Japan’s surrender n e a r e r . ^25 with American
forces poised within easy striking distance of Kyushu, Japanese
126 defeat seemed inevitable. No one realized, however, that Okinawa
was the last major invasion of the war in the Pacific.
^^^Belote, Typhoon of Steel, p. 319.
125 Baldwin, Battles Lost and Won, p. 371.
^^^Potter, Nimitz, p. 377.
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OPERATION OLYMPIC; KYUSHU AND AFTER
Background
While the Okinawa campaign drew to a successful conclusion,
military commanders in the Pacific turned serious attention to "Opera
tion Olympic"— the invasion of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's home
islands. American planners had not easily reached the decision to
execute such an assault although U,S. forces had pressed forward over
the central and southwest Pacific islands to position American striking
power close to Japan proper.
As early as May 1943 a Joint Chiefs of Staff memorandum sug
gested that an invasion of Japan might be required to bring about the
Allied war goal of the unconditional surrender of Japan, but planners
gave little thought to such a monumental amphibious undertaking until
late 1944. The Joint Chiefs of Staff directive of 3 October that set
the Luzon-Iwo Jima-Okinawa strategy in motion tacitly assumed that an
invasion of Japan would probably be necessary.^ To begin to establish
the framework for the attack, the Joint Chiefs issued a directive on
^K. Jack Bauer and Alan C. Coox, "Olympic vs. Ketsu-Go," Marine Corps Gazette 49 (August 1965):32-33 (Bauer wrote the parts on Olympic, Coox the sections on Ketsu-Go; since only Olympic is applicable, article hereafter cited as Bauer, "Olympic").
322
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3 April 1945 naming MacArthur and Nimitz as force commanders with the
JCS retaining operational control. A few weeks later joint staff
planners reported that assault, occupation, and military control were
measures essential for unconditional surrender and suggested that
resources for the operation receive top priority from Allied strategists.
Accepting their planners' arguments, the Joint Chiefs named Kyushu as
2 the site of an amphibious attack to take place on 1 November 1945.
On 25 May the Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered continued efforts
to weaken Japanese resistance and a two-phase plan to attack the
Japanese mainland. The first phase— Operation Olympic— would have
Admiral Spruance's Fifth Fleet land General Walter Krueger's Sixth Army
at Kyushu on 1 November. After the isolation of the island and the
securing of airfields and bases, the second phase^-"Operation Coronet"—
would carry invasion forces to Honshu in March 1946. An estimated
five million men, mostly American, would be involved in these opera
tions; MacArthur would have overall responsibility for the invasions,
and Nimitz would command the naval forces. Finally there would be a
unified command in the Pacific. The invaders of Kyushu could expect
to be greeted by 450,000 troops, 5,000 kamikazes, and submarines and
suicide boats. The Combined Chiefs of Staff approved the projected
^Grace P. Hayes, "The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in World War II: The War Against Japan," vol. 2; "The Advance to Victory" (Historical Section, JCS, 1954), pp. 362, 375-78, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Hayes, "Advance to Victory"); Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-1944, p. 536.
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O invasion of Japan at the Potsdam Conference in July.
Although:the consensus of American military opinion eventually
accepted the necessity of actually invading Japan, some American
leaders, anticipating a heavy toll among the attacking forces, hoped
that the combination of submarine blockade, naval bombardment, and
Army Air Forces strikes would force Japan to give up her fight. The
two naval officers on the Joint Chiefs— Admirals King, and William A.
Leahy— both felt that victory would come without a land invasion, a
view which Nimitz and Spruance supported.^ Many in the air force went
along with the naval position, but the army's argument that the inva
sion was essential won out and planning began.^
The invasion of Kyushu would have assistance from other Allies.
In spite of the opposition from many upper echelon American commanders,
including MacArthur, at Potsdam the Combined Chiefs of Staff accepted
the use of three British Commonwealth divisions within the American
army and the participation of the British Pacific Fleet and a few air
squadrons.^ The Soviets, too, were eager to be in on the kill in the
3 Bauer, "Olympic," pp. 34-36; Hayes, "Advance to Victory," pp. 380, 385; Frank and Shaw, Victory and Occupation, pp. 404-6. A King and Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King, p. 598; Forrestel, Spruance, p. 210; William D. Leahy, I Was There; The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time (New York; McGraw-Hill, 1950), p. 259.
^Craven and Cate, The Pacific; Matterhorn to Nagasaki, p. 703; Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-1944, pp. 487-89.
^Thorne, Allies of a Kind, pp. 524-25; Hayes, "Advance to Victory," pp. 391-92.
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Pacific. First offering, at Tehran in November 1943, to aid in the
Pacific after Germany fell, Stalin repeated the idëa at the Yalta
Conference in February 1945 but made no firm commitment of forces to
be used in the struggle.^ The Soviet Union had, after all, not declared
war against Japan. Even with Allied aid. Operation Olympic would be
primarily an American, rather than a combined, venture.
Before the 25 May directive from the Joint Chiefs of Staff
authorizing the invasion of Kyushu, the services issued studies and
plans of the projected operations. General Krueger's Sixth Army, with
a total of 815,548 troops, would capture, occupy, and defend several
islands to the south and southwest of Kyushu five days before D-Day and
then would land at three points on Kyushu on 1 November. Beginning in
late July, Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet with its fast carriers and
British carriers would begin the softening-up process, aided by the
Far East Air Forces and the Strategic Air Force. Task forces connected
with Spruance's Fifth Fleet, which would bear the burden of the actual
amphibious assault, would begin bombardment and minesweeping on
23 October. As in other Pacific landings, a thorough softening-up of
O the objective took precedence over the element of surprise.
The amphibious force for Olympic, commanded by the indefatigable
Admiral Turner, would consist of all three of the amphibious forces in
^Pogue, Organizer of Victory, pp. 523-24, 528-29, 533-35; Hayes, "Advance to Victory," pp. 347-48. O Frank and Shaw, Victory and Occupation, pp. 404-7; Bauer, "Olympic," p. 37.
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the Pacific and about 2,700 ships and craft. The Fifth Attack Force,
under Vice Admiral Harry W. Hill, would land Major General Harry
Schmidt’s Fifth Amphibious Corps on the Kushikino-Kaminokawa beaches
on the west coast of Kyushu; Vice Admiral Daniel E. Barbey's Seventh
Attack Force would put ashore Major General I. P. Swift's First Corps
near Miyazaki on the east coast; and Vice Admiral Theodore S. Wilkinson's
Third Attack Force would lift Lieutenant General Charles P. Hall's
Eleventh Corps to the head of Ariake Wan in the Shibushi-Koshiwarbaru
Q area, also on the east coast. This would be, by far, the largest
amphibious operation of the Pacific War,
Preparation
Training the army troops for the amphibious phase of Olympic
would require an officer well versed in the landing and support of
large armies, and Nimitz and Turner selected Admiral Hall because of
his past experience. Arriving in Manila from the Hagushi anchorage
off Okinawa, Hall reported to Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, who commanded
the Seventh Fleet, on 10 June for temporary duty as the commander of
the amphibious training group, while still retaining command of
Amphibious Group Twelve.Hall also reported to General MacArthur,
Kinkaid's superior, who delivered one of his rousing talks on the
g Frank and Shaw, Victory and Occupation, pp. 407-8; Commander Task Force 40, Operation Plan All-45, annex A, p. 1, serial 00034 of 10 August 1945, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Turner's Operation Plan, Olympic).
^^10 June 1945, War Diary, 12th Amphibious Group; JLH Oral History, pp. 265, 287-88.
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importance of Hall's job of commanding the joint training for Olympic.
Unimpressed, the admiral still felt some resentment toward MacArthur,
whose job had been to defend the Philippines, for leaving Lieutenant
General Jonathan M. Wainwright to surrender the islands in 1942 and
then to suffer imprisonment in Manchuria. MacArthur, his wife, and
son had scurried to safety in a PT boat.^^
Admiral Barbey, commander of the Seventh Amphibious Force,
had established the amphibious training group at Subic Bay in mid-March
for the purpose of providing refresher training for combat divisions
in the Philippines. These troops would be the vanguard for Operation
Olympic. Following Barbey's directive. Hall began arranging the
necessary facilities and programs as soon as he got to Subic Bay. To
consolidate amphibious training still further, Turner planned to unify
the training program, as well as administrative and operational con
trol, of the Seventh Amphibious Force into his own amphibious command
12 by mid-August.
With a more formalized organization than he had been able to
use in the preparation for the Okinawa operation. Hall set up his
amphibious training group to handle the essential training tasks.
Captain Ralph E. Hanson supervised the amphibious training center at
^^JLH interviews, 2 and 21 July 1977.
12 Commander, 7th Amphibious Force, Operation Order 9-45, serial 0039 of 28 May 1945, Training— Subic Bay file, JLH Papers; "Administrative History: CinCPac, Amphibious Forces," 1:175. Barbey, MacArthur's Amphibious Navy, does not refer to this training period.
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Subic Bay, which provided intensive instruction for selected officers
and also ran mobile units to help transport squadron and division
commanders in preparing and conducting joint exercises. The transports
and amphibious training unit afloat, under Commodore J. B. McGovern,
had the responsibility for planning and executing troop training on
the beaches and in the training areas. Separate groups conducted
refresher programs on LSTs, LSMs, control craft, and gunfire support
13 craft, and for beachmasters and beach parties.
The training program swung into action by the end of June, and
in the succeeding weeks Hall provided instruction for elements of the
Eighty-first and Americal Divisions, the First Cavalry Division, the
Twenty-fifth, Thirty-third, Fortieth, Forty-first, and Forty-third
Infantry Divisions, and the 112th and 158th Regimental Combat Teams.
The nine-day crash courses for officers at Subic Bay consisted of basic
instruction in amphibious assault techniques. Subsequent troop training
of the same army units, held at Leyte, Zamboanga, Lucena, Luzon, Iloilo,
Lingayen, and La Union Province, Cebu, involved three weeks of
individual and unit training and full-scale landings.The Army Air
Forces did not participate in the joint training.
13 Commander, Amphibious Group 12, Operation Order A1211^45, serial 0083 of 22 June 1945, and Operation Order 1214-45, serial 0093 of 12 July 1945, JLH Papers.
^^Turner to JLH, regarding amphibious ship-to-shore training program for army troops in Philippines, serial 000219 of 3 June 1945, ibid.; Command History, Amphibious Group 12, pp. 5-6.
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Some variance of purpose developed between Turner and
MacArthur about the scope of the training. Always pushing for
thorough preparation, Turner wanted division and corps headquarters
and staffs to participate in battalion and regimental combat team
practice landings, while MacArthur believed that refresher training
for only battalions and regimental combat teams would be sufficient.
Hall tried to carry out Turner’s larger goals. Division staff officers,
after attending the courses at the amphibious training center, did
take part in the landing exercises.
As all of these army components brushed up on their knowledge
of amphibious warfare. Hall also turned his attention to the projected
invasion of Japan itself. Unlike many of his fellow naval officers.
Hall felt that the assault on the home islands would be necessary
because he believed that the Japanese would never surrender.Neither
Hall nor the other commanders knew of the atomic bomb at that time.
To launch the intensive planning for Operation Olympic,
Turner, who had become a four-star admiral in late May, arrived at
Manila in mid-June; and Hall made several trips from Subic Bay to
Manila to meet with him and Barbey about the upcoming amphibious assault
^^Command History, Amphibious Group 12, p. 7; Turner's instructions to Hall, 3 June 1945, cited in "Administrative History: CinCPac, Amphibious Forces," 1:172.
^^JLH Oral History, p. 276; JLH interview, 21 July 1977.
25 June, 7 and 30 July 1945, War Diary, 12th Amphibious Group; Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, 2:1109-10.
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With his staff. Turner churned out plans and memoranda for various
units of the invasion forces long before he issued his operation plan
in early August; the tactics would be a large-scale version of his
18 earlier operations. Following Turner's comprehensive guidelines, the
three assault force commanders— Hill, Barbey, and Wilkinson— started
their preliminary planning with their army or marine counterparts.
Wilkinson, whose attack force would land General Hall's
Eleventh Corps, wrote Admiral Hall in mid-June, explaining his pro
jected role in Operation Olympic. Wilkinson wanted Hall in overall
command of the landing as commander of the third transport group,
consisting of three transport squadrons carrying the First Cavalry,
Forty-third Infantry, and Americal Divisions to Ariake Wan at Kyushu.
His duties would include the direction of the landing of troops and
equipment as well as the usual tasks associated with maintaining an
19 an c h o r a g e .
Subsequently, Hall met with General Hall and his chief of
staff on 6 July, and the admiral happily discovered that he and the
general would be able to work well together. The staffs of the two
18 Turner's plans and memoranda in Olympic file, JLH Papers; other correspondence on the operation, e.g., to Nimitz, Wilkinson, and Spruance, in Turner Papers, series I, folder: Turner's Pinks 1945, Unlike naval commanders' orders in the E.T.O., Turner's plans left little to the discretion of lower-level officers.
19 Wilkinson to JLH, 16 June 1945, Training: Subic Bay file,
JLH Papers; Turner's Operation Plan, Olympic, annex A, pp. 6 - 8 , 10, and annex B chart.
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commanders could make only the most tentative attack plans at that
20 time. Before Wilkinson issued his operation plan or Hall considered
his own, other circumstances intervened to make additional preparation
unnecessary.
Surrender and Occupation of Japan
After Japan rejected the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July, which
offered the choice of unconditional surrender or "prompt and utter
destruction," President Harry S Truman ordered the use of the newest
weapon in the American arsenal, the atomic bomb. On 6 August, the
mushroom-shaped cloud rose over Hiroshima and, three days later, over
Nagasaki. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on 8 August. The
Japanese quickly decided to give up their struggle to defend their
21 contracting empire and agreed to surrender terms on 14 August.
Although the American military commanders had not known in advance
about the dropping of the A-bomb, many were glad to learn about it.
Hall thought the use of the bomb hastened the end of the war and saved
Allied forces hundreds of thousands of lives because an invasion of the
29 Japanese home islands would not be necessary.
20 JLH to Wilkinson, 6 July 1945, Correspondence: 1945 file, JLH Papers. 21 Morison, Victory in the Pacific, pp. 342-49.
29 Forrestel, Spruance, p. 222; JLH Oral History, pp. 294-95; JLH interview, 21 July 1977. See Louis Morton, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," in Greenfield, Command Decisions, pp. 388-410, for a concise account of how Truman made the decision.
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Long before Japan's capitulation both Nimitz and MacArthur had
considered plans to occupy the defeated country. On 27-28 July the
two officers issued an occupation plan that was similar in many ways
to the projected Olympic and Coronet operations. Dividing Japan into
three sections, the plan assigned Halsey’s Third Fleet the task of
lifting Lieutenant General R. L. Eichelberger's Eighth Army; Spruance's
Fifth Fleet would transport Krueger's Sixth Army; and Vice Admiral
Frank J. Fletcher's North Pacific Force would land parts of the Eighth
Army. In addition Kinkaid's Seventh Fleet would carry the Twenty-fourth
23 Corps to the southern part of Korea. The entire operation would be
under MacArthur's supreme command.
A part of Halsey's Third Fleet, Wilkinson's amphibious force
would transport and land troops in northern Honshu and Hokkaido. After
receiving orders on 18 August to command a task force of the Third
Amphibious Force, Hall set his staff to work in preparing the movement
and operation orders. In three days the orders were ready. Hall's
force would put ashore the Eleventh Army Corps in the Tokyo Bay area,
as well as elements of the Fifth Air Force, Eighth Army headquarters,
the Fourteenth Corps, and headquarters of the commander in chief of
the army forces in the Pacific.
Following the hasty preparations. Hall's Tokyo Bay Force, with
23 Morison, Victory in the Pacific, pp. 353-57.
24 18-23 August 1945, War Diary, 12th Amphibious Group; Command
History, Amphibious Group 12, p. 8 ; JLH Oral History, p. 298.
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the transport Hansford as flagship, sailed on 25 August from Batangas,
Luzon, with the first echelons of the Tokyo force: transport squadron
sixteen and transport division sixty-five carrying the First Cavalry
Division and the 112th Regimental Combat Team. Wilkinson, with
transport division sixteen, rendezvoused with Hall’s formation at
Manila, but the entire convoy put in at Subic Bay that evening because
of the threat of a typhoon. The Tokyo Bay Force sortied again on the
twenth-seventh, intending to reach its destination on 3 September;
but Hall received a message that the force’s arrival on the second, to
coincide with the official Japanese surrender, was desirable. Luckily,
no bad weather interfered with the force, which increased its speed to
25 meet the deadline.
Early in the morning of surrender day, Hall and his ships
steamed majestically into Tokyo Bay in a long single column formation
as army B-29s and navy fighters flew overhead, They passed the battle
ship Missouri to starboard and carefully avoided the destroyer bringing
the Japanese to the surrender ceremony on the battleship. Flag
officers of Wilkinson’s force had been invited to witness the historic
event, but Hall had to proceed with unloading the troops and sent
Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, embarked in the Hansford as an observer.
25 Commander, Amphibious Group 12 (CTF 33), Report of the Occupa tion of the Tokyo Bay Area, 18 August-1 October 1945, pt. 2, pp. 1-3, serial 04397 of 7 December 1945, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as Hall's Tokyo Bay Report); Command History, Amphibious Group 12, pp. 8-9.
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26 to represent the Third Amphibious Force,
The Tokyo Bay Force arrived off Yokohama at 0915, and, within
a few hours. Hall landed the trained amphibious assault troops and
reserve forces. Thus his last amphibious operation of World War II
resembled his first one so many years earlier when he had helped take
the marines into Iceland: there was no opposition to either movement
of troops.
Shortly after the surrender ritual on the Missouri, Admiral
Turner, who had flown in for the occasion, signaled Hall, asking if he
had a car on board that could take Turner to Tokyo. Hall sent a
messenger to ask General Eichelberger, commander of the occupying
Eighth Army, if it were permissible for the two admirals to drive to
Tokyo. Uncertain about the risks to their personal safety, the general
replied that he had not yet established patrols as far as Tokyo.
Undaunted, Turner, accompanied by Captain James H. Doyle and Hall,
drove into the capital city, stopped at the American Embassy, where the
Swiss had handled American interests in Japan during the war, and
then went to the shrine of Admiral Tojo. Turner had previously
visited the Tojo shrine when his cruiser Astoria brought the remains
of the Japanese ambassador to the United States, Hiroshi Saito, back
to Japan in 1939. As the naval party drove around Tokyo, the Japanese
paid no attention to it. Hall was impressed with how healthy-looking
26 Hall's Tokyo Bay Report, pt. 2, p. 3; Wilkinson letter, 2 September 1945, quoted in Morison, Victory in the Pacific, p. 369.
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the Japanese appeared; they scarcely resembled a people who had been
at war for many years. Hall believed that he. Turner, and Doyle were
the first American naval officers to enter the city after the war
. . 27 e n d e d .
Afterward, Hall resumed his task of unloading his task force
and had cleared the first group of ships by 4 September. Succeeding
convoys brought additional men and supplies, and Hall continued to
supervise the unloading, as well as the assignment of berths and the
movement of ships in Yokohama harbor and nearby anchorages, until 1
October. During this month. Hall's force unloaded at Yokohama and
nearby Tateyama 91,039 men, 16,413 vehicles, and 123,327 short tons of
28 cargo.
With the guns of war finally silent and the occupation of Japan
underway, Hall moved on to higher command responsibilities. As com
mander of Amphibious Group Twelve, a part of Turner's efficient
amphibious forces in the Pacific, Hall had organized and expanded the
training program at Subic Bay for the proposed assault on Kyushu,
putting to use the experience he had gained as commander of Amphibious
Forces Eight and Twelve. He had participated in Turner's planning for
Olympic and would have commanded the transports carrying the landing
27 JLH interview, 21 July 1977; JLH Oral History, pp. 300-2; Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, 2:1114-15.
28 Command History, Amphibious Group 12, p. 10; Hall's Tokyo Bay Report, pt. 1, p. 4.
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force of Wilkinson's attack force. When peace came, his Tokyo Bay
Force put ashore a large number of occupation troops and their supplies,
and he remained in the area for a month while the buildup progressed.
It was ironic that a fighting amphibious commander's first and last
wartime operations were administrative movements of troops.
The capitulation of Japan represented the fruition of the
successful Pacific strategy and military prowess put forward by the
American armed forces. Not a coalition war, the struggle to halt,
and then reverse, Japan's expansion had involved the use by the United
States of classic naval principles. While operating from bases far
from the American continent, the U.S. Navy had destroyed the enemy's
commerce by submarine warfare, demolished her fleet, and neutralized
29 the far-flung Japanese bases. By encircling the home islands ever
tighter by blockade and bombardment, the American military had driven
its assault to Japan's doorstep and was prepared to land in the main
islands. At the forefront of the American offensive stood the amphib
ious forces of Turner, Barbey, and Wilkinson. As in the European
theater, the newly perfected amphibious capability of the United States
Navy paved the way for American victory and subsequent dominance in
the Pacific.
29 Weigley, American Way of War, p. 311, calls the American victory a "Mahanian triumph of sea power."
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Commander, Amphibious Forces Pacific and Later Commands
While American officials were still in the Tokyo Bay area
after Japan's formal surrender on 2 September, Spruance told Hall that
he and Nimitz wanted to send Turner back to the United States for a
much needed rest. Concerned about the combined results of wartime
strain and too much alcohol on Turner's health, they believed that
30 Turner would benefit by returning to his family. Turner himself must
have realized that he had been in the Pacific long enough, for in late
August he requested a change of duty and suggested that Barbey take
charge of the amphibious forces in the Pacific, because Wilkinson
31 wanted shore duty. Apparently Turner changed his mind, because he
put Hall's name at the top of a list sent to the Bureau of Naval
Personnel of three officers with "very broad amphibious command experi-
32 ence" who might assume Turner's duties.
On 2 October Hall took command of Vice Admiral Hill's Fifth
Amphibious Force and, a few days later, flew to Pearl Harbor. On the
fourteenth. Hall relieved Turner as commander of Amphibious Forces,
Pacific, and merged the staffs of these two commands with that of
33 Amphibious Group Twelve. This was the second time that Hall had
30 JLH interview, 21 July 1977; Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer. 2:1110-11, 1115.
31 Turner to Secretary of the Navy, 23 August 1945, Turner Papers, series I, Correspondence: 1945 folder. 39 Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, 2:1116.
^^Orders and Travel: 7 January 1942-27 December 1945 file, JLH Papers; 2 and 14 October 1945, War Diary, Commander, Amphibious Forces,
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relieved Turner; the first had been as head of the strategy section
at the Naval War College. Now, as on that earlier occasion. Hall took
over from him with humility, cognizant of the fact that the big
amphibious task was already done. Hall always considered Turner to
be one of the greatest naval officers that ever f o u g h t . A s Hall
wrote to his old friend. Admiral Stark, it was "very gratifying to me
to make the team in the Pacific after working so long in other
35 theaters." Along with the new assignment came a raise in rank, and
on 10 December Hall became a vice admiral.
Hall's command, caught up in the rapid demobilization of the
American forces at war's end, simultaneously took part in "Operation
Magic Carpet" (bringing the boys back home) and in trying to establish
its place in the postwar Navy. Because of the pressures exerted on the
Navy Department by Congress and, in turn, on Congress by constituents,
demobilization took priority over peacetime amphibious preparedness.
Hall considered the speed of the demobilization process hazardous to
36 military strength and stability.
Nevertheless, the navy's task was to return the soldiers and
U.S. Pacific Fleet, OA, NHD (hereafter cited as War Diary, ComPhibsPac).
^^JLH to Vice Adm. J. L. Kauffman, 28 October 1945, Correspondence: 1945 file, JLH Papers.
35 JLH to Adm. H. R. Stark, 3 November 1945, ibid.
^^JLH to Wilkinson, 19 October 1945; JLH to Rear Adm. Bert J. Rodgers, 1 December 1945, ibid.; JLH Oral History, pp. 307-8.
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sailors to the United States, and Rear Admiral H. S. Kendall, commanding
Carrier Division Twenty-four, took control of a task group that became
responsible for Magic Carpet. Swiftly increasing from a small nucleus
of ships in mid-September, the task group numbered 369 vessels three
months later. In addition to its combat ships, Kendall's force bor
rowed amphibious shipping from Hall's command— about 222 assault
transports. By 15 March 1946 the Magic Carpet groups had taken
1,307,859 servicemen home, and Kendall's carrier division was dissolved.
The Magic Carpet operation continued for another six months, lifting
127,233 more men, but the bulk of the homeward bound movement was
complete in March. Complementing the ships of Magic Carpet, the army
and the War Services Administration carried almost two million more
37 servicemen and civilians from the Pacific to the United States.
As the Magic Carpet Operation continued. Hall's force began
its rapid contraction and started to assume its postwar shape. When
Hall took over the command, it had included, by Turner's reorganization
of 1 August, three amphibious forces; fourteen amphibious groups;
fourteen transport squadrons; numerous landing ship and craft flotillas;
various unassigned transports, amphibious command ships, and landing
37 Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 15: Supplement and General Index (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1962), pp. 18-20; Joseph Bykofsky and Harold Larson, The Transportation Corps: Overseas Operations, in United States Army in World War II: The Technical Services (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1957), p. 545; Wardlow, Transportation Corps, p. 545.
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ships; an underwater demolition team; an air support control unit; a
training command with twelve bases; and an administrative command with
five bases and units. It was an impressive collection of 3,579 ships
and craft and 657,000 officers and men.^®
During the ensuing months, demobilization and peacetime needs
caused Hall's force to shrink to a fraction of its former strength.
The three amphibious forces were dissolved before the end of the year,
and many other elements of the command were quickly deactivated. By
early March the Chief of Naval Operations had reduced the number of
39 ships in Hall's command to 105.
As the reduction in force progressed, plans for the role of
the amphibious forces in the Pacific remained uncertain. Hall flew to
Washington on 21 December 1945 for a series of conferences in the Navy
Department to try to learn something of the future basic organization
of the entire amphibious arm of the Navy, but plans were still nebulous.
On his return trip to Pearl Harbor he stopped at the amphibious
training command at Coronado, a part of his amphibious forces. The
commander of the training unit. Rear Admiral George H, Port, shared
Hall's uncertainty about the future of the amphibians
38 Dyer, Amphibians Came to Conquer, 2:1105; "Administrative History: CinCPac, Amphibious Forces," l:appendix A.
39 October 1945-June 1946, passim, War Diary, ComPhibsPac.
40 JLH to Rear Adm. George H. Fort, 19 December 1945, Corre spondence: 1945 file, JLH Papers.
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The army compounded naval problems. Throughout the early
months of 1946 there were difficulties in handling army requests for .
training because of the shortage of ships and because of the uncoor
dinated demands for amphibious training of troops in Japan, the
Marianas, Hawaii, and on the west coast. These conflicting require
ments exceeded naval postwar capabilities. Hall later learned that
the army was trying to usurp the navy's function of amphibious
training and had asked for the Morro Bay facility as a site for a
41 training center.
Further increasing the problems arising from the lack of firm
plans for the assignment of ships and from misunderstandings with
the army. Hall's staff was reduced to a fraction of the officers that
he had requested. By May the Chief of Naval Operations had authorized
only twenty-eight billets. The reduction, of course, paralleled the
diminution of the duties of the amphibious forces of the Pacific Fleet.
Hall feared that the planners in Washington jeopardized naval ability
to support the troops by stripping away too much too quickly. He
hoped that the upper echelons would not run the risk of neglecting
many of the lessons learned the hard way during the war. With such
apparent neglect. Hall could only hope that intelligent American
participation in the United Nations would maintain world peace and
41 JLH to Fort, 13 May 1946; JLH to Vice Adm. Conolly, 28 January 1946; Rear Adm. Jerauld Wright to JLH, 4 March 1946, Correspondence: 1946 file, JLH Papers.
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order. Otherwise, the next generation would have a tougher job on its
hands than Hall's contemporaries had in 1941.^^
The early months of 1946 passed without the evolution of a
definite peacetime policy for the amphibious forces, and on 6 June
Hall turned over the command to Rear Admiral A. D. Struble. Hall
sadly reflected that he had presided over the dismemberment of a
powerful amphibious empire.
Hall's next assignment was as commander of the Hawaiian Sea
Frontier and commandant of the Fourteenth Naval District. The two-
hatted assignment, which Hall handled for nearly two years, involved
the supervision of a large geographical area including the Hawaiian
archipelago and Midway, the Palmyra, Johnson, and Washington atolls,
and the adjacent sea areas.Little of the experience of administering
the two commands utilized the amphibious expertise that Hall had
gained during the war years. Old memories resurfaced when General
Eisenhower visited the area and delivered a speech in Honolulu. He
remarked that Hall had served under him in the Mediterranean and at
42 JLH to Commodore J. B. McGovern, 15 March 1946; JLH to J. H. Cherry, 17 April 1946; JLH to Lt. T. B. Larkin, Jr., 18 April 1946; JLH to Vice Adm. H. W. Hill, 30 April 1946; JLH to Capt. M. N. Little, 20 May 1946; and JLH to Rear Adm. A. D. Struble, 23 May 1946, ibid. All of these letters reflect Hall's concern over the drastic cuts in amphibious strength.
^^Background information and activities of the two commands are in "Administrative History: Fourteenth Naval District and the Hawaiian Sea Frontier," vols. 1 and 2; and Commander, Hawaiian Sea Frontier and Commandant, 14th Naval District, Command Narratives, 1 September 1945-June 1947, OA, NHD.
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Normandy and in those theaters the admiral was known as the "Viking of
Assault.
The admiral’s next command did, however, offer an opportunity
to use the knowledge that he had gained about joint operations and
training. Admiral Louis E. Denfeld, Chief of Naval Operations, had
written Hall in February 1948, suggesting that Hall was eminently
qualified to become commandant of the Armed Forces Staff College.
After receiving orders to the college, Hall relinquished his Hawaiian
Sea Frontier-Fourteenth Naval District command on 28 May and relieved
Lieutenant General Delos C. Emmons as commandant of the Armed Forces
Staff College on 28 J u n e . 46
Established by a Joint Chiefs of Staff directive of 18 June
1946, the Armed Forces Staff College (AFSC) at Norfolk, Virginia, had
as its mission the instruction of a select group of army, navy, and
air force officers in the establishment and operation of theaters and
in joint operations within those theaters. Since the National War
College trained the highest command echelons and the individual
service schools provided instruction for lower ranking officers, the
Armed Forces Staff College was designed to train the commanders
44 JLH to Maj. Gen. R. B. McClure, 2 February 1953, Correspondence: January-April 1953 file, JLH Papers,
45 Adm. Louis E. Denfeld to JLH, 10 February 1948, Correspondence: June 1946-June 1951 file, ibid.
^^Orders and Travel: 18 January 1946-30 December 1949 file, ibid.
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responsible for the joint tactical and logistical problems on the
theater level. Students were usually of middle rank. Beginning in
January 1947, two classes of 150 students attended five-month sessions
each year. A few officers from Allied services— Hall vividly
remembered a kilted Scot named Colonel Bill Stevenson— also partici
pated in the classes as observers.
The first part of the courses of instruction consisted of a
study of the characteristics, capabilities, and limitations of each
service's war tools. After mastering this basic knowledge, students
then witnessed several airborne and amphibious demonstrations and
studied earlier joint operations. The second phase covered the
organization, composition, and functions of a theater of operations.
In the third part of the course the students learned how to conduct
joint overseas operations, planned amphibious and airborne operations,
and tested several of these plans in joint staff exercises.The
college indeed answered the problems that inadequate joint training
had caused early in the war, and Hall was thankful that the Joint
Chiefs of Staff had moved rapidly in establishing a viable method of
^^Lt. Gen. Delos C. Emmons to JLH, 30 March 1948, Correspondence: June 1946-June 1951 file, ibid.; JLH interview, 12 August 1977. See E. R. McLean, Jr., "The Armed Forces Staff College," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 78 (August 1952): 833-37, for a brief summary of the establishment, purposes, and functions of the college (hereafter cited as McLean, "Armed Forces Staff College"),
^^Emmons to JLH, 30 March 1948, Correspondence: June 1946-June 1951 file, JLH Papers; "Armed Forces Staff College," booklet printed for 25th anniversary, 1971, JLH Papers.
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preparing officers to conduct joint operations.
After Hall replaced Emmons as commandant, he made few changes
in the organization or courses at the AFSC. His most important duties
were setting the general policy of the college and directing the naval
course of instruction. To aid him in running the AFSC, a station com
mander supervised a staff that handled routine administrative matters.
As head of the faculty. Hall had under him two deputy commandants
of the army and air force, a senior air instructor, and the secretariat.
There were six divisions of faculty— plans and operations; intelli
gence; logistics; communications; civil affairs and military government;
and research, development and analysis. To supplement the presenta
tions by faculty members, who were equally divided among the three
services and were experts in their specialized fields, Hall often
called on distinguished outside speakers to share their knowledge on
49 subjects of study. Speakers included military authorities such as
Generals Curtis LeMay of the U.S. Air Force, Geoffrey Keyes and Jacob
Devers of the army, and Admiral W. H, P. Blandy, and historian
Dr. Douglas Southall Freeman.
Most of the instruction at the college heavily emphasized
airborne and amphibious operations and came from lectures, small
seminars and conferences, committee studies, and staff assignments.
Hall required a lengthy thesis from each student unless he chose the
^^Ibid.
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optional assignment: to work with two officers of other services in
preparing a joint study describing the best command system in a given
theater. Officers who performed this task satisfactorily were exempt
from thesis-writing. Not all instruction took place at the college,
however; field trips augmented the students' mastery of the services'
capabilities. Hall arranged two or three visits for each class to
army, navy, and air force installations.^^
As time passed and the classes returned to their original
units, some wrote to Hall of the value of the knowledge gained at the
AFSC. Colonel Frank B. James, USAF, sent a letter from his post as
air attache in Moscow and stated how the famous amphibious operation at
Inchon, Korea, in September 1950 reflected the doctrines and principles
taught at the AFSC.^^ Even higher praise came from General George C.
Marshall, secretary of defense, after he spoke at the graduation
exercises in January 1951, He wrote that he had been impressed by the
extremely favorable reports of the AFSC training and that officers
completing the course are "well grounded in a common basic knowledge
of the requisites of joint training, the responsibilities of theatre
commanders, and the conduct of amphibious, airborne, and the overseas
operations." Marshall continued that the commandant's character
largely determined the success of such a school, and "I commend you
^^JLH interview, 12 August 1977; JLH Oral History, pp. 326-27; McLean, "Armed Forces Staff College," pp. 836-37.
^^Col. Frank B. James to JLH, 29 September 1950, Correspondence: June 1946-June 1951 file, JLH Papers.
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for your admirable performance of duty as Commandant of the Armed Forces
Staff College.
Hall's own evaluation of the value of the instruction given
potential leaders of future joint operations appeared in many of his
speeches at other military institutions. In addressing the Army War
College in January 1951, the admiral emphasized the necessity of an
effective command organization to bring about integrated team work by
the three services. Every successful operation had intelligent con
current planning in order to bring effective fire power against the
enemy. Although any operation was designed to carry out the troop
commander's scheme of maneuver, the attack force commander had to be
able to control movement and to coordinate all actions until the
ground commander was firmly established ashore. In another talk.
Hall echoed his old refrain of letting the commander of a joint
operation— with his experience, staff assistance, communications, and
knowledge— execute the attack (or withdrawal, as at Hungnam in Korea)
without interference from commanders of other services. Common
doctrine and mutual understanding, taught at the National War College,
the AFSC, and the Armed Forces Industrial College, would allow all
joint operations to proceed more smoothly. Hall told his graduating
students at the AFSC that the overwhelming advantages of joint
training were the sharpening of mental flexibility that would make
5? Cen, Ceorge C. Marshall to JLH, 26 March 1951, Miscellaneous: 1950-1951 file, ibid.
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other assignments easier, gaining self-confidence, and being grateful
53 for what they had learned.
While he was commandant of the AFSC, Hall received one of the
most heartwarming honors ever bestowed on him; a doctor of laws degree
from his old alma mater, William and Mary. He returned to Williamsburg
to give the bacculaureate address to the class of 1949 and to receive
54 the degree.
Hall’s tour of duty at the AFSC utilized once again the
admiral's amphibious knowledge and his skill as a trainer of joint
amphibious forces. After Major General Andrew D. Bruce assumed command
of the college on 6 July 1951, Hall's last assignment was the dual job
as commander of both the Western Sea Frontier and the Pacific Reserve
Fleet.
The sea frontier guarded the west coast of the United States,
directed shipping, operated search and rescue missions, and supervised
the three naval districts within its jurisdiction. It also worked
closely with the army, the air force, the Canadians, and the commander
in chief of Alaska, in joint and combined defensive plans for the
53 JLH speeches at Army War College, 5 January 1951; at National War College, 1 May 1951; at AFSC, July 1949, Speeches file, ibid. In JLH Oral History, p. 323, the admiral continued to stress that joint education "will prevent the kind of foolish mistakes that we made in the Mediterranean, and in the U.K., and even later in the Pacific."
^^"William and Mary Address," 12 June 1949, JLH Papers.
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entire western area.^^ To further these close relations. Hall called
regular meetings of the district commandants and sector commanders and
also held conferences that included the Alaskan and Canadian commands
(called ALCANUS). He had learned from his wartime experience the
necessity for joint and combined cooperation in order to work effec
tively in such problems as defending the west coast. Hall felt that
the frequent personal contacts fostered a mutual understanding and
made collaboration simpler.
The other component of Hall's command, the reserve fleet,
handled the decommissioning and mothballing of numerous ships that had
seen active service during the war. Bases for the fleet stretched
along the west coast and were at Bremerton, Tacoma, Columbia River,
San Francisco, Mare Island, Stockton, Long Beach, and San Diego. The
number of ships and craft in the fleet varied but averaged about eight
hundred. As the Korean War became a prolonged stalemate, more reserve
shipping reverted to active status, and Hall oversaw the commissioning
or recommissioning of a number of ships in his reserve f l e e t . H a l l
contributed ships, but not his amphibious knowledge, to the Korean
^^For history and duties of the command, see "Administrative History: Western Sea Frontier"; and Commander, Western Sea Frontier, Command Narratives, OA, NHD.
^^JLH interview, 16 August 1977.
^^Pacific Reserve Fleet, Command History, 1 September 1945-30 September 1947, OA, NHD; Commander, Pacific Reserve Fleet, Pacific Reserve Fleet Organization, serial 0305 of 13 December 1951, OA, NHD; Correspondence: July-December 1951 file, passim, JLH Papers.
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conflict.
Retirement
Time marched on for the admiral. He reached the statutory
retirement age of sixty-two on 11 April 1953. Saddened at having to
leave the navy that he had loved and served for forty-four years, he
turned over his command of the Western Sea Frontier and the Pacific
Reserve Fleet to Vice Admiral Francis Low on 1 May. Hall and his wife
turned toward home— Virginia.
Before he left San Francisco, Hall received a letter from his
old commander in chief in the Mediterranean and at Normandy, President
Dwight D. Eisenhower. He wrote that he would never forget Hall's
contribution to victory in those areas and that the navy would suffer
a real loss with Hall's retirement. Eisenhower hoped that the "Viking"
58 would be as formidable on the fairways as he had been on any D-Day.
When Hall retired from active naval duty as a four-star
admiral, he and his wife settled into their home in Alexandria,
Virginia. Shortly afterward the House of Delegates and the Senate of
the Commonwealth of Virginia passed a joint resolution expressing the
gratitude of his native state for his service to his state and to his
59 nation.
CO Dwight D. Eisenhower to JLH, 20 April 1953, Correspondence: January-April 1953 file, JLH Papers.
59 House Joint Resolution no. 85, 8 March 1954, ibid. See appendix B for complete text.
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Hall rejected several civilian employment opportunities and
chose instead to volunteer his talents to a cause that helped service
men— the United Services Organization. He served as U.S.O. national
campaign chairman from April 1955 until March 1957 and remained on the
executive committee and the board of governors for another two years.
While busily engaged in U.S.O. matters. Hall also returned to
temporary active duty on 11 October 1954 to participate in a survey
of the National War College and the Industrial College of the Armed
Forces. From 16 May to 30 June 1956 the admiral served on the Joint
Chiefs of Staff ad hoc committee of senior officers of the armed forces
and the Department of State to recommend improvements for the National
War College.Unswerving in his belief in the efficacy of adequate
joint military education at all levels of command. Hall happily
returned to the Armed Forces Staff College to deliver the graduation
address on 19 January 1956.^^
Admiral Hall maintained his contacts with his comrades-in-
arms, and he attended President Eisenhower's reception for the military
in 1954. As the admiral approached him through the receiving line the
president turned to his wife and said, "Oh, Mamie! Here's the Viking!"
Curious as to why Eisenhower continued to dub him with the nickname.
60 U.S.O. file, JLH Papers; JLH Oral History, pp. 329-36.
^^National War College Boards file, JLH Papers.
^^Gradùation Address, AFSC, 19 January 1956, Speeches file. ibid.
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Hall later received an explanation from press secretary James C.
Haggerty. The president said that during the war officers at general
headquarters often referred to Admiral Hall as the Viking of Assault
for two reasons: the principal one was because he looked like a
Viking; the second one was because he was often involved in assaults
on hostile shores, "’The Vikings did a lot of that,' the president
added,
Later, the admiral was a subject of a case study in leadership.
Writing in the Naval Institute Proceedings, a naval chaplain pointed
to Hall's predominant characteristics:
[he] looked like a sailorman— he was physically large, with the rugged face of one who has sailed the seven seas for years. Yet he was extremely humble, soft-spoken, even to the point of dif fidence. He was an out-of-doors man who loved his golf . . . and who appreciated a good joke. Perhaps most of all he was a leader who believed that his subordinates could be depended upon to carry out their assigned duties without his having to look over their shoulders.
His outstanding feature was "great strength of character. Two special
qualities made their impact upon all who came in contact with him:
genuine humility, and profound love of country.
As the years passed. Hall increasingly devoted his time to
caring for his invalid wife, who died in February 1977, to earning his
"spending money" on the golf course, and to visiting with his numerous
63 James C. Haggerty to JLH, 9 June 1955, Correspondence: 1955 file, ibid.; JLH interview, 16 August 1977.
Frank F. Smart, Jr., "Leadership: A Case Study," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 84 (March 1958):64-65.
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friends and admirers. Admiral Hall died on 6 March 1978 and was
buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
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AN EVALUATION
With the Allied victory in 1945, the American military could
reflect with satisfaction on both the strategic decisions and the
tactical execution of those decisions that had led to the defeat and
unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, Strategic thinking had
evolved from a primarily defensive emphasis to a hard-hitting, aggres
sive offensive outlook that spawned an identical metamorphosis in
military doctrine and tactics. When American planners, with their
British allies, decided to take their fight directly to the enemy's
shores, the choice called for a new, relatively untried, and dangerous
form of warfare— the amphibious assault— which involved large-scale
joint and combined attacks against continental land masses in the
European theater and smaller attacks against the islands or enemy
positions in the Pacific theater.
The transformation of strategy and military tactics was
startling when compared with the state of American strategic thinking
and preparedness between the two World Wars. The U.S. Navy, for
example, had given little thought to the kind of fighting that emerged
in World War II.
After World War I and the amphibious debacle at Gallipoli,
354
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the navy paid scant attention to ship-to-shore landing techniques
until the mid-1930s. The marines, on the other hand, believed that
amphibious operations would always be essential, Assigned the landing
force task in the Orange Plans, the marines established the East and
West Coast Expeditionary Forces in 1921 and participated in fleet
exercises in the mid-1920s. Developing an early core of literature
which culminated in the Tentative Landing Operations Manual of 1934,
the marines provided the doctrinal foundations for later army and navy
concepts of joint operations but still concentrated on the seizure of
advanced bases rather than assaults on large land masses.
The establishment of the Fleet Marine Force in 1933 and its
practice with the navy and sometimes the army in the series of FLEX
exercises between 1935 and 1941 did provide limited operational
experience and pinpointed weaknesses in such vital areas of amphibious
assault as naval gunfire and air support, observation of that support,
landing boats and craft, ammunition, communications, transports,
combat loading, and command relations. The navy responded to the
landing craft problem by experimenting with and then ordering craft
that later became the LCVPs, the LCMs, and LVTs. Arriving later on
the amphibious scene, by mid-1940 the army had begun training two
divisions for possible landing operations. But collectively, by
7 December 1941, the services could only have undertaken small-scale
amphibious assaults, and this capability reflected the strategic
requirements of the interwar years.
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In the early part of 1942, as strategists toyed with the idea
of launching amphibious operations in both the European and Pacific
theaters, the navy established the amphibious forces of the Atlantic
and Pacific Fleets, Commanded by flag officers, the forces included
trained amphibious troops, transports, and covering forces. As self-
contained units, the amphibious forces would provide the capability
for staging landing operations.
Admiral Hall and the Development of Amphibious Warfare in World War II
When amphibious assaults became a reality, many elements
essential to success came into play. How each of the vital components
influenced the outcome of an attack and how the amphibious art grew
can be readily illustrated by following the operations in which
Admiral Hall participated.
Planning
Not directly involved with the planning between Hewitt and
Patton for the North African assault. Hall had the responsibility for
organizing his Sea Frontier Forces of the Western Task Force, With
only six weeks to prepare, Hall ran into problems forming a staff of
competent officers, writing plans and orders, and securing convoy
space for his equipment. In his next operation— Sicily— Hall com
manded the Gela force and again had only six weeks to work out assault
plans in conjunction with General Allen's First Infantry and with
Patton. The commanders had some difficulties preparing joint plans
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because of changing army requirements, and the Army Air Forces did not
participate in these preparations, with tragic consequences, Similar
to Sicily, the Salerno assault planning hinged on last-minute army
decisions and changes that precipitated confusion and hasty revisions
of Hall's own plans. In contrast to the planning for Sicily, the
staffs of Hall and Allen were located near each other, which facilitated
joint planning. Again, the air force did not join in the planning.
Given ample time before the massive Normandy attack by the
issuance of the Neptune initial joint plan four months in advance.
Hall's staff was able to work with the staffs of Generals Gerow, Ger-
hardt, and Huebner, all in close proximity, to hammer out details of
the assault, uncluttered by late changes by the army. This time the
air force did join in the process. Moving to the Pacific, Hall worked
closely at Pearl Harbor with Turner and Generals Buckner and Geiger
in the initial planning stages for Okinawa, and Hall's staff wrote
the naval assault plan before arriving at Leyte. Turner's operation
plan for the expeditionary force was so complete that Hall only had to
apply it to his own Southern Attack Force. While preparing for the
Kyushu invasion. Hall had not completed his operation plan with
General Hall before the war ended. In comparison with the first three
operations with their speed and uncertain army requirements, the last
two major assaults were preceded by an almost leisurely planning
phase with better defined and less fluctuating army needs.
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Training
Before the North African invasion Hewitt had hastily established
a training program in his amphibious force of the Atlantic Fleet. With
a short time to make his forces ready for the new type of operation,
Hewitt felt that his command had not reached battle efficiency before
Operation Torch. Competing with the navy’s training, the army had
begun its own separate amphibious training program and even challenged
the navy’s task of operating the landing craft.
Learning from his experience as Hewitt’s chief of staff during
Operation Torch, Hall transferred that knowledge to his command of the
amphibious forces in northwest African waters. Hall set up groups to
handle the landing craft and bases, the escort sweepers, the joint
amphibious schools, the beach battalions, and headquarters activities.
An important innovation in his program was the gunfire range where
destroyer gun crews, army shore fire control parties, and naval gunfire
liaison officers practiced intensively to improve the accuracy of
naval gunfire. In cooperation with the Fifth Army’s invasion training
center, the amphibious forces trained for amphibious operations,
beginning with Sicily, Again, difficulty in forming a staff and
delays in the arrival of equipment interfered with orderly training,
as did the lack of clearly defined spheres of army-^-navy responsibility.
After Operation Husky, Hall’s training program expanded, and
his command, now the Eighth Amphibious Force, added new groups for
transports, old destroyers, and boom and net. Conflict with the army
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lessened after Elsenhower issued his directive of 30 July, delineating
the responsibilities of both array and navy in amphibious operations
and placing all training under Hall's naval command. Experience and
expansion of the amphibious training center and amphibious schools
resulted in far more efficient training for Salerno.
When Hall assumed command of the Eleventh Amphibious Force
and took on the responsibility for all joint training for the Normandy
invasion, he used an organization similar to that of his Mediterranean
command, adding groups for gunfire support and salvage. Each of the
task groups had thoroughly trained personnel assigned to them, while
the joint amphibious schools offered instruction in gunfire support,
communications, combat loading, and demolition of beach obstructions.
Numerous small-and-large-scale exercises sharpened the techniques of
army and navy participants. In contrast to the Mediterranean, the air
force took part in the joint training. Under Hall's vigorous
direction the Eleventh Amphibious Force readied about a quarter of a
million men fro Operation Neptune-Overlord.
In the European theater, the evolution of the training process
reflected the increasing importance of adequate preparation as
amphibious operations grew larger and more complex. Supervised by
Hall in both North Africa and Britain, training rapidly changed from
the uncertain and sometimes poorly defined program in early 1943 to a
tightly run and highly specialized process a year later. An added
advantage of Hall's training programs was that he subsequently
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commanded many of those forces in battle, thus providing continuity
between training and operations.
Reaching the Pacific, Hall, as commander of Amphibious Group
Twelve, found that Turner's amphibious forces had been effectively
preparing the assault forces, so Hall had only to provide brief
refresher training before the Okinawa operation. Assigned to command
the amphibious training for the Kyushu attack, Hall patterned his
organization at Subic Bay after his Eleventh Amphibious Force and had
begun intensive instruction and exercises when the war ended.
After the war. Hall again utilized his knowledge of amphibious
operations when he commanded the Armed Forces Staff College. Chosen
consistently for commands that called for skills in training joint
forces for amphibious assaults, one of Hall's greatest contributions
to amphibious warfare was as a trainer.
Rehearsals
An integral part of training, pre-operation rehearsals never
accurately simulated the conditions of an actual invasion. Always
preceded by joint conferences and followed by critiques, the rehearsals
varied in thoroughness and success. Before Torch the rehearsals
revealed numerous weaknesses in amphibious readiness. Hall's Gela
force rehearsal prior to the Sicily assault went fairly well but did
not complete the unloading process to give shore parties the opportunity
to cope with the clutter on the beaches. The same shortcoming arose
in the rehearsal for Salerno, plus the absence of many of the assault
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ships and craft, Prior to Normandy, Hall's rehearsal again took place
without all assigned shipping and landed on beaches dissimilar to the
actual assault beaches, but a full-scale unloading did provide realis
tic experience in handling beach pileups. Following the pattern of
incompleteness. Hall's two rehearsals before Okinawa landed troops on
beaches that did not resemble the true landing areas and used only
simulated air and naval fire. Nevertheless, rehearsals did provide
practice for all components of an assault force and allowed opportuni
ties for last-minute improvements.
Loading
The technique of combat loading the assault transports
developed slowly in the European theater. The North Africa operation
was not typical because of the long voyage and the necessity of
providing enough supplies until the follow-up convoys arrived. Hall
had great difficulty at Sicily and Salerno because the army would not
pare down its non-vital requirements and tried to insist on such
hazardous additions as aviation gasoline and bombs. At that time
the army had only a limited understanding of the basic concepts of
combat loading, a situation which was reversed before the Normandy
undertaking. Well-trained transport quartermasters oversaw the
loading, which was virtually perfect. In preparing for Okinawa,
Hall added two temporary transport divisions to carry men and
supplies not required for the assault, and no major difficulties arose,
although the army did carry more materiel than they initially needed.
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Task Forces and Landing Forces
In an amphibious operation the army determined the forces
necessary to accomplish its goal and the navy provided the lift and
support. For the North African campaign, Patton's force of 35,000
men and 250 tanks traveled to French Morocco in Hewitt's 105-ship
Western Naval Task Force. Two other task forces carried another
132,000 Allied troops to other assault locations. For Sicily, Ramsay's
Eastern Naval Task Force landed Montgomery's Eighth Army while
Hewitt's seventeen-rhundred-ship Western Naval Task Force put ashore
Patton's Seventh Army, including armored units. Hall’s Gela force
consisted of about eighty-five vessels, lifting the First Division.
In the Salerno invasion Hewitt commanded the Western Naval Task Force
of over 600 vessels carrying Clark's Fifth Army, and Hall's Southern
Attack Force contained 142 ships and craft lifting the Thirty-sixth
Division plus other Sixth Corps troops. Normandy, the greatest of
all amphibious operations, boasted of an Allied expeditionary force of
five thousand vessels embarking two armies. Hall's Omaha Force, a
part of Kirk's Western Naval Task Force, had 691 ships and craft
attached to it, In the Pacific, Okinawa was a smaller operation^—
Turner's 1213-ship expeditionary force lifted Buckner's Tenth Army—
while Hall's Southern Attack Force consisted of 371 vessels carrying
the Twenty-fourth Corps. The largest of the Pacific amphibious
assaults, the Okinawa operation was the first time an entire army
landed in a central Pacific attack. No marines took part in European
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operations, in contrast to their rugged performance in the central
Pacific; and no armored divisions landed on the central Pacific islands.
Weather
Any ship at sea is subject to the whims of capricious nature,
and most of Hall's landings encountered some sort of foul weather.
Before the North African landing, the severe storm of 6-7 November
threatened the whole operation, which continued on schedule because
of the accurate prediction of Hewitt's aerological officer. Commander
Steere. The same team of Hewitt and Steere outguessed the storm that
preceded the Sicily assault, and again the invaders managed to reach
their destination as planned. The Salerno attack alone enjoyed calm,
clear weather. Before Normandy the blinding storm that swept across
the Atlantic caused D-day to be postponed one day, and another
devastating blow on 19-22 June played havoc with the ships, craft, and
Mulberry-A off the landing beaches. More bad weather plagued Hall's
attack force in its approach to Okinawa, causing some diversions and
lost time, and another turbulence early in the buildup stage slowed
unloading and damaged shipping. Even Hall's Tokyo Bay Force had to
retreat to Subic Bay because of a possible typhoon.
Landing Beaches
The shores on which Hall landed the assault troops varied
greatly, and each called for different tactical methods to reach the
beaches. At Fedala, the landing site chosen to capture nearby
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Casablanca, the gently sloping beaches had some reefs off shore. More
landing problems arose from the inadequate landing craft and boats and
their ill-trained crews than from the nature of the beaches. False
beaches and runnels prevented any but the smaller craft and pontoon
causeways from easily beaching at Sicily in the nearly tideless
Mediterranean. Beaching problems were fewer at Salerno. Mines on the
beaches at Sicily and in the coastal waters at Salerno further com
plicated landing procedures. Embankments or seawalls, topped by a
shelf and then a bluff, backed the beaches at Normandy. The great
tidal range, runnels, and the formidable off-shore obstacles presented
more hindrances to landing and unloading. New to Hall were the
beaches at Okinawa, typical of the Pacific islands, with their coral
reefs barring the shore from the larger landing craft.
Underwater Demolition Teams
For surveying the landing beaches and removing underwater
obstacles, Hall had not used underwater demolition teams before the
Normandy invasion. The UDTs came into regular use in the Pacific a
little earlier, with the Marshalls campaigns of January 1944. The
difficulty of the task of the UDTs differed markedly at Normandy
where, with heavy loss of life, the frogmen destroyed the elaborate
defensive obstacles, and at Okinawa, where, with no casualties, they
successfully demolished the simple stakes lining the beaches.
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Prelanding Naval Gunfire and Other Preparations
Of all of Hall’scampaigns only North Africa lacked any pre
landing softening up by either land or carrier-based planes. In the
Mediterranean and at Normandy, Army Air Forces planes had pounded the
invasion site extensively, while carrier-based planes performed the
same task at Okinawa. Prelanding naval gunfire was another story,
however. At North Africa, Sicily, and Salerno the army requirement
of surprise ruled out any preliminary fire, and at Normandy the same
decision limited naval gunfire at the Omaha beaches to a brief forty
minutes. In the Pacific assaults, surprise was not important, and
at Okinawa the fire support group steadily blasted the island for six
days before the assault. In bombarding an isolated island where the
invaders’ control of air and sea prevented reinforcement by the
defenders, the amphibious forces could take advantage of the oppor
tunity for a lengthy pre-invasion softening up. In contrast, in the
European theater where the Axis could quickly call their mobile
defensive forces into play, surprise and the rapid establishment of
a beachhead spelled the difference between success and failure.
Hall’s views on the desirability of prelanding naval gunfire
changed as he participated in more campaigns. At Sicily he believed
that bombardment before the troops arrived at the beach would have
reduced casualties. By the time of the Salerno invasion, only two
months later, he realized that naval guns were not very accurate in
the darkness and accepted the necessity for maintaining the element of
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surprise. In the Pacific, Hall welcomed the conditions that permitted
prolonged softening of the beaches.
Timing
Closely connected to the idea of surprise was the selection of
an appropriate time for the amphibious assault. The Casablanca,
Sicily, and Salerno invasions took place in darkness and'the predawn
hours, Normandy and Okinawa in the early morning light. The army
leaders felt that they would lose fewer men by attacking in darkness,
although naval gunfire support would be less effective. In addition,
the participation by paratroopers— used at Sicily and Normandy,
scheduled but canceled at Salerno— called for a landing time that gave
the paratroopers a chance to drop during the night. Although the navy's
role in assault operations would have been easier during daylight hours.
Hall again accepted the army's need for surprise. He only questioned
the army decisions before the Normandy landings when he unsuccessfully
tried to arrange staggered landing schedules that would allow
sufficient time for his underwater demolition teams to clear the
obstacles.
Opposition
After the landing forces reached shore, they encountered enemy
soldiers of varying degrees of skill and determination in the Mediter
ranean and at Normandy; the Okinawa landing was virtually unopposed
because the Japanese chose to do their fighting inland. The very
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nature of the enemies influenced the ferocity of the opposition. The
French in Morocco put up a short fight before swinging over to the
Allied side; the Italians in Sicily were unenthusiastic; the Germans
at Sicily, Salerno, and Normandy threw everything they could at the
invading forces. But the Japanese dug in and fought to the death.
Only at Okinawa did Hall encounter the callous disregard for human
life that countenanced the one-way raids of kamikaze planes, suicide
boats, and Baka bombs.
Landing Aids
To get the assault forces to the beaches required the use of
landing craft and vehicles suited to the locale. After relying on the
unsatisfactory landing craft at Casablanca (LCMs, LCVs, LCP(R)s, LCP(L)s,
and LCSs— none over fifty feet in length), Hall welcomed the new
vessels available for Sicily. LSTs, LCTs, LCI(L)s, and the smaller
LCVPs revolutionized the landing and unloading capabilities of the
amphibious forces. These craft had arrived in North Africa during the
spring of 1943, concurrent with their appearance in the Pacific. In
the Pacific, the LCI(L)s were refitted for use as gunboats for close
support. Despite the recommendations of Hewitt and Hall, such a con
version did not take place in the Mediterranean. Another new addition
at Sicily was the DUKW, and the use of this swimming truck permitted
the army to land artillery quickly on D-Day. DUKWs began service in
the Pacific at Kwajalein in January 1944, Still another innovation,
the pontoon causeway, aided in carrying supplies across the runnels
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to the beaches, and this device appeared at Makin in the Pacific a
few months later. Introduced at Normandy, the rhino ferries helped
unload the larger landing craft. The mammoth Mulberry that caused
Hall such difficulty at Omaha beach had no counterpart in the Pacific.
The LVTs (amtracs), the sturdy vehicles that rumbled over the coral
reefs in the Pacific throughout the war, played no part in operations
in the European theater.
Postlanding Naval Gunfire Support
Of all the facets of amphibious operations, the evolution of
the use of the navy’s firepower to support the ground forces in their
land battles was the most spectacular development of World War II.
Adhering to Lord Nelson's old maxim that a "ship's a fool to fight a
fort," prewar naval thinking focused on the role of ships' guns in
harassing or destructive fire against enemy shore batteries during an
assault.^ In carrying out counterbattery fire, ships ran at high
speeds at long ranges from the target area, with a resulting loss of
accuracy and effectiveness of the gunfire. The North African invasion
neatly illustrated the prevailing tactics, and naval guns never
completely silenced the shore batteries at Fedala and the guns of the
Jean Bart. In the northern attack area off Mehedia, deep naval gunfire
did knock out gun emplacements and broke up a column of trucks
bringing French reinforcements, demonstrating the potential use of
^Writing a month before Pearl Harbor, Richard C. D. Hunt, "Naval Gunfire Support in Counterbattery," Marine Corps Gazette 25 (November 1941):21-22, 167, illustrates this view.
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naval gunfire in assisting ground operations, A similar learning
experience had occurred in the Pacific at Guadalcanal where there had
been no concept of using naval gunfire to support the troops, and at
Tarawa where the navy became aware that it must move its ships in
closer to bombard shore defenses and to continue its support of the
2 land forces.
Afterwards, naval gunfire underwent a rapid and marked transi
tion. Intensive training of support ships and shore fire control
parties and tactical experimentation resulted in new uses for the
navy’s guns. At Sicily, for example. Hall sent his cruisers and
destroyers in close to the beach, and the ships effectively broke up
tank and infantry counterattacks; similar tactics contributed to
maintaining the tenuous beachhead at Salerno. The close-in tactic
first appeared at Kwajalein in the Pacific six months after Sicily,
and in the Pacific naval commanders took the new concept and utilized
it in the extensive prelanding softening up process as well as in
direct support of the ground forces. At Normandy, Hall once again ran
his destroyers in to point-blank range (some to 800 yards) to lend
decisive assistance to the raging battle ashore. At Okinawa, Hall
used another tactic, standardly employed in the Pacific: he kept
gunfire ships at the scene of the assault until the final victory.
Support ships had played a similar role at Sicily.
2 McMillian, "Gunfire Support Lessons Learned," pp. 979, 986-87.
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By the end of the war, naval gunfire support had become an
accepted and integral part of the army’s ground battles, reversing
the prewar concept that the navy could not engage fortifications,
emplacements, and other enemy defenses ashore. World War II amphib
ious operations demonstrated that rapid and accurate fire from the
sea could prepare the assault area, supply the necessary support until
artillery on shore was operational, and then continue to provide fire
power to assist the ground forces.^ A decisive element in the amphib
ious success story, the development of naval gunfire support was "one
of the major tactical surprises" of the war.^ Commanders such as
Hall quickly recognized the potential of naval guns and aggressively
used ships' firepower as an important aid in amphibious assaults.
Air Support
Another crucial supportive element to amphibious operations
came from aircraft. At Casablanca, carrier planes contributed
importantly to the victory. At Sicily, Hall's task force had to
rely on land-based Army Air Forces planes, and lack of joint planning
and coordination led to the tragedy of shooting down the paratrooper
laden transports. Air cover was too little and too late during the
^McMillian, "Development of Naval Gunfire Support," p. 1.
^Robert D. Heinl, Jr., "Naval Gunfire Support in Landings," Marine Corps Gazette 29 (September 1945):40.
^Idem, "Naval Gunfire: Scourge of the Beaches," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 71 (November 1945):1309.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 371
operation. Salerno brought improvements with fighter planes pro
viding adequate coverage. Before Normandy, air force representatives
had participated in the planning process; but, because of bad weather,
the planes did not deliver their scheduled bombing of the Omaha
beaches just before H-Hour. Air cover was effective, however,
throughout the landing and buildup periods. Hall felt that the lack
of control over air support by the assault force commander was a
serious weakness in the Mediterranean and at Normandy. In the Pacific,
the use of carrier planes provided this control as a routine feature
of amphibious operations, and Hall had tactical command of supporting
naval aircraft during the first week of the assault. The most
serious challenge to air support at Okinawa came from the kamikazes.
Unloading
Logistical support of the ground forces comprised a vital part
of amphibious warfare. Unloading massive amounts of supplies over
open beaches rather than at docks was a new development of World
War II and went through a trial and error process before becoming
efficient. Congestion on the beaches— a perennial problem for Hall's
first three landings— resulted, at Casablanca, from an insufficient
number of men in the army shore parties to unload the landing craft
and to move the supplies to inland dumps. At Sicily, problems in
addition to lack of manpower contributed to the pileups on the
beaches. Landmines, air attacks, and slow salvage operations all had
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a part in producing cluttered beaches and causing the transports to
remain in the area for fifty-five hours. Skimming twenty-to-thirty
hours off the unloading time at Salerno, Hall's force still had
difficulties with emptying the transports, because again there were
insufficient men and trucks in the shore parties to clear the beaches.
By the time of Normandy, however, an effective shore party and engineer
special brigade had mastered unloading techniques so thoroughly that
the assault transports could begin leaving the Omaha area within
twelve hours. Unloading of later convoys slowed down until the army
abandoned its idea of emptying the vessels by priorities. At Okinawa,
the situation regressed. Transports, excellent targets for enemy air
raids, remained for days off Hall's Hagushi beaches because the army
still relied on priority unloading and did not have a highly pro
fessionalized shore party. The army could not unload and move the
supplies as fast as the navy could land them.
Flagship
Important in maintaining the continuity of naval command at
the assault scene was the flagship. The concept that the force
command ship must be primarily a vast communications center, not a
man-of-war or a transport, grew from the Casablanca and Mediterranean
experiences and from the communications failures at Tarawa. At
Casablanca, the task force commander had been in the cruiser Augusta
which participated in several lively engagements with the French navy.
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At Sicily and Salerno, Hall had embarked in the Samuel Chase, a
transport that had to leave the assault area rapidly. One attack
force commander did have the use of the Ancon, the only well-equipped
ACC in the theater, for Sicily, Hewitt took over the ship for
Salerno, and Hall used the Ancon at Normandy. It was not until the
Marshalls operations in early 1944 that an AGC was available in the
central Pacific. During the Okinawa operation. Hall directed his
attack force from the Teton, specifically designed as a command vessel,
which performed adequately.
Communications
Closely tied to the creation of adequate command ships, com
munications proficiency underwent a similar type of evolutionary
development. Problems with malfunctioning equipment, overloaded
circuitry, and poorly trained personnel in the Augusta had caused
delays and breakdowns in communications at Casablanca. The Augusta's
active firing had caused many of the impairments, At Sicily, the
Samuel Chase, with her hastily improvised communications facilities,
provided far more effective service, although the ship could not
fully meet the demands upon her. Breakdowns and delays continued to
plague communications efficiency. Using the same flagship for the
Salerno operation. Hall's force encountered similar difficulties.
Again, communications needs could not be met by the equipment in the
Samuel Chase. Hall's use of the specially outfitted command ships—
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the Ancon at Normandy and the Teton at Okinawa-r-r-enabled h im to handle
the vast communications requirements with no difficulties in these
camp ai gns .
Command Relationships
At Hall's level, relationships between army and navy commanders
took several operations to reach a satisfactory arrangement and often
reflected the state of cooperation between commanders of the higher
echelons. Joint command had begun well with the Casablanca opera
tion where Patton had not tried to interfere with naval procedures,
and harmonious relations continued between Patton and Hall while the
latter commanded the sea frontier forces. At Sicily, however,
tension between army and navy commanders, unsure of their precise
roles, impeded training, loading, and the conduct of the assault.
Eisenhower's directive of 30 July 1943 at last clarified training
responsibilities in the area. In preparing for and executing the
Salerno operation, more difficulties for Hall’s command arose over
planning, loading, and unloading procedures.
By the time of the Normandy attack, there were fewer
problems with command duties because the responsibilities of all
commanders had been carefully delineated by the Kirk-Bradley
memorandum. In the preparation stage. Hall found Generals Gerow,
Gerhardt, and Huebner cooperative. During the buildup, some problems
arose with unloading procedures, and Bradley and Hall had a serious
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confrontation about the misplaced ammunition. None of these commands
ever included the Army Air Forces. In the Pacific, the concept of
unified command served well at Okinawa, as it had in earlier battles
in that theater.^
Although it took several operations to define precise command
relations in amphibious warfare, most of the inter-service diffi
culties came from lack of a clear knowledge of duties and from
basic personality differences. Hall himself had few personal problems
with army leaders; the disagreements came from command responsibilities.
In spite of the wrangling between the army and navy, their cooperation
and success far outweighed their differences.
Combined Relations
Even before the war Hall had a taste of combined relations
in his conferences in Canada with British and Canadians about
trans-Atlantic convoy duty and when he was at Scapa Flow working
with the British home fleet to protect the Murmansk convoys. After
the war began and the Combined Chiefs of Staff determined grand
strategy, the execution of amphibious assaults involved the coopera
tive efforts of American and British forces in the European theater.
The Western Naval Task Force at French Morocco had been strictly an
American venture, so no coalition fighting was involved in Hewitt's
^Blandy, "Command Relations," p. 577.
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command. After the French capitulated. Hall did participate in
American efforts to win the friendship and support of French
military leaders in Morocco— a part of the policy to lure the
Vichy French to the Allied cause. Both during the surrender talks
and during Hall's tenure as commander of the sea frontier forces,
the admiral's dealings with the French were nonabrasive and conducive
to amicable Franco-American relations in Morocco.
In the combined Sicily invasion, Anglo-American planning
for the assault took place on the Eisenhower-Cunningham-Alexander-
Tedder echelons, and once again Hewitt's task force consisted of
American ships carrying the soldiers of Patton's Seventh Army. Hall's
only dealings with the British were the attendance of two generals
at the rehearsal and critique. Like Sicily, general planning took
place at higher command levels for Salerno although this time Hewitt
would command a British and an American task force lifting Clark's
First Army, also a combined force. Hall's Eighth Amphibious Force
did provide training for two French divisions, and Hall took part
in several conferences with British commanders.
During the six-month training period before Normandy,
however. Hall had numerous contacts with the British military.
Although planning again occurred at the level of Eisenhower and
his British subordinates. Hall dealt with Royal Navy commanders at
conferences and at both British and American exercises and rehearsals,
exchanging tactical information and suggestions. He worked closely
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and well with Admiral Leatham, the commander in chief at Plymouth,
but often disagreed with decisions of Admiral Ramsay, ANCXF, and
had a troublesome encounter with General de Guingand, Hall's
relationships with the British, typical of the half-friendly, half-
hostile coalition of Allied strategists and tactical commanders,
did not detract from the ultimate combined goal of securing a lodge
ment in France in order to take the war directly to Germany. To
their credit, the Allies allowed neither strategic differences of
opinion, tactical techniques, nor personality clashes to weaken
their drive to victory. Generally, coalition fighting was a
success.
In the Pacific, the British played no real role before the
Okinawa campaign in which they supplied a carrier force. Hall had
no contacts with British naval leaders in that theater.
Each of these assorted and diverse components of amphibious
attacks evolved through the experience of the combat operations
of World War II. The process of developing and refining the equip
ment, tactics, and plans was not always smooth and often suffered set
backs, but the ultimate achievement— success— came only three years
after the beginning of the Allied strategy of reversing Axis
expansion by means of amphibious landings. That the United States
Navy so quickly and effectively developed and operated the unprece
dented amphibious war machine is a tribute not only to the highest
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echelon planners in Washington and to the unnumbered thousands of
servicemen who participated in the operations, but also to practical
tactical commanders like Hall, who made the machinery work.
A member of Hall's staff summarized— perhaps with a degree
of exaggeration and zeal brought on by close association throughout
the war— Hall's contributions to amphibious operations in World
War II;
. . . The further tour of duty with Admiral Hall is the book that need to be written— surely the ultimate record of this war seen in the broad tapestry of history will show Admiral Hall as responsible for most of the advancements in doctrine of assault on foreign shores as well as the tactical commander of the largest armadas in history— Gela, Salerno, Normandy. Who else responsible for the use of spot Naval bombardment for troop cover— the use of the Dukw for early supply— the drying out of landing ships that immensely speeded up logistic support— orderly methods for combat loading and discharge of transports? Who else the administrative skill to supply an army over undeveloped beaches— who finally a tower of imper turbability during the difficult "kamikaze" days of Okinawa? Single actions may be fine, but the continuous burdens of unprecedented tactical command each with successful outcome need the acknowledgement that we too had a Nelson and that Nelson was Hall. The decisive surface actions of this war were not against ships, but the storming of land masses in the technique of ^ which Admiral Hall was the originator and [who had no] peer.
The amphibious capability that propelled American armies
into Europe and into the Pacific was the necessary first step to the
unplanned consequences: where American armed might remained,
American political influence became dominant. In a sense, U.S. naval
^A. V. Leslie to Rear Adm. J. A. Briggs, 26 November 1958, enclosed in Briggs to JLH, 10 December 1958, Correspondence: 1958 file, JLH Papers. Leslie had been on Hall's staff from the Mediter ranean to Okinawa.
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commanders such as Admiral Hall, by providing the tactical ability
that landed and supported the armies, made possible the emergence
of the United States as the paramount world power.
The Continuing Importance of Amphibious Warfare
As World War II faded into memory and rapid demobilization
reduced American readiness to a dangerously low level during the
early Cold War years, the amphibious arm of the navy lapsed into
disuse. Many military leaders, including General Bradley, questioned
the need for amphibious forces in the age of atomic bombs and guided
O missiles. But the outbreak of the Korean War once again called for
amphibious techniques to put ashore American armies, and the landing
at Inchon on 15 September 1950, a classical assault reminiscent of
World War II operations, demonstrated the need for maintaining the
9 amphibians as a permanent part of the navy.
Amphibious striking power did remain an arm of the peace
time navy, although its function and tactics changed markedly.
g Robert E. Cushman, Jr., "Amphibious Warfare: Naval Weapon of the Future," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 74 (March 1948) 301-7, energetically refuted this line of thinking and argued that the U.S. would always need amphibious capability to seize and hold bases to support the fleet. Also, Isely and Crowl, U.S. Marines and Amphibious War, p. 589, rejected the idea that the A-bomb or airborne operations could replace amphibious operations.
^Robert S. Salzer, "The Navy's Clouded Amphibious Mission," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 104 (February 1978):24 (hereafter cited as Salzer, "Amphibious Mission").
^^Anticipating the change, Samuel B. Griffith, "Amphibious
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Reflecting American strategic needs of the 1950s and 1960s, the navy
established small amphibious ready groups, consisting of four or five
ships containing marine amphibious units and supported by naval air
power. These high speed, flexible groups protected American nationals
during the evacuation from Israel and Egypt in the Suez crisis of
October-November 1956, and helped to steady an uncertain political
situation during the Lebanon landing in July 1958.^^
The Vietnam War revealed weaknesses in American amphibious
capability, however. Although their landing techniques were sound,
the armed forces rarely succeeded because the Vietcong enemy did not
stand and fight at the beachhead. Only one regimental landing— south
of Chu Lai on 18 August 1965— could be ranked as a success. As a
result of this ineffectiveness, some naval officers have called for
a reappraisal of current amphibious thinking and have advocated a
12 return to the concept of staging division-size operations.
Whatever turn amphibious preparedness may take in the
Warfare Yesterday and Tomorrow," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 76 (August 1950):873-74, called for small, self-contained, highly mobile assault combat groups. Echoing the same theme, David S. Bill, Jr., "The Amphibious Assault— Fast, Flexible, and Powerful,"
United States Naval Institute Proceedings 8 8 (October 1962):47-57, pointed to other methods of modernization of amphibious operations to be able to put out brush fires.
^^Salzer, "Amphibious Mission," pp. 24, 26; Brief History of Amphibious Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, World War II Command File, DA, NHD.
^^Salzer, "Amphibious Mission," pp. 30-33.
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U.S, Navy of the future, the credit must go to the pioneers of World
War II for making amphibious warfare a viable and accepted means of
engaging the enemy on its own territory. Whether against large land
masses as in North Africa and Europe or against isolated islands as
in the Pacific, the amphibians of World War II brought revolutionary
changes to the art of modern warfare.
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KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS
AFSC: Armed Forces Staff College
AGC: Auxiliary General Communications ship— Amphibious Force flagship
AK: Cargo ship
AKA: Cargo ship, attack
AM: Mine sweeper
ANCXF: Commander in Chief, Allied Naval Expeditionary Force
AP: Armor-piercing projectile
AP: Transport
APA: Transport, attack
APD: Destroyer hull transport (high speed)
CAP: Combat Air Patrol
CCS: Combined Chiefs of Staff
CTF: Commander, Task Force
CTG: Commander, Task Group
CWO: Communications Watch Officer
COSSAC: Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander
DD tank: Dual drive tank
DUKW: Amphibious truck
FSCC: Fire Support Coordination Center
382
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FLEX: Fleet Landing Exercise
HC: High-capacity projectile
JASCO: Joint Assault Signal Company
JCS: Joint Chiefs of Staff
LCA: Landing Craft, Assault
LCC: Landing Craft, Control
LCF: Landing Craft, Flak
LCG: Landing Craft, Gun
LCI: Landing Craft, Infantry
LCI(L): Landing Craft, Infantry (Large)
LCM: Landing Craft, Mechanized
LCP(L): Landing Craft, Personnel (Large)
LCP(R): Landing Craft, Personnel (Ramp)
LCS: Landing Craft, Support
LCT: Landing Craft, Tank
LCVP: Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel
LSD: Landing Ship, Dock
LSG: Landing Ship, Gantry
LSI: Landing Ship, Infantry
LST: Landing Ship, Tank
LVT: Landing Vehicle, Tracked
MT: Military Transport
NAN Beacon: Infra-red signaling system
NGLO: Naval gunfire liaison officer
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NOB: Naval Operating Base
NOIC: Naval Officer in Charge
PBY-5A: Catelina aircraft'— amphibian plane
PC: Patrol Craft
PT: Motor Torpedo Boat
RAF: Royal Air Force
RCM: Radio and Radar Countermeasures
RCT: Regimental Combat Team
RN: Royal Navy
SC: Submarine Chaser
SCR-609: Signal Corps Radio
SFCP: Shore Fire Control Party
TBS: Talk Between Ships— very high frequency radio equipment
TBY: Low-powered portable radio equipment
TCS: Radio transceiver (HF), used in amphibious craft
TF: Task Force
TG: Task Group
UDT: Underwater Demolition Team
VP: Patrol plane squadron
YMS: Motor Mine sweeper
YT: Harbor Tug
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPENDIX É
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA GENERAL ASSEMBLY
HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 85
Agreed to by the House of Delegates and the Senate, March 8, 1954.
Whereas, Admiral John Lesslie Hall, Jr., a descendant of distinguished Virginia ancestry, was born in Williamsburg, Virginia, and was educated in the schools of this State before entering the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland; and
Whereas, since his graduation from the Naval Academy, Admiral Hall has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in the United States Navy, earning many high awards and decorations from the United States and other nations for gallantry and meritorious service, thus sym bolizing the high degree of patriotism and devotion to duty that has ever been a Virginia tradition; and
Whereas, the opportunity has come to few men to command large forces against so many of his country’s enemies on so many occasions and in such vast areas. In the recent war, this great Virginian led attacks successfully against hostile Vichy France, Italy, Germany and Japan, and in the vast areas of the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily, Italy, the Normandy Beaches and the Pacific Ocean. In his profession, he was recognized as an expert in naval tactics and strategy, and in amphibious warfare in both hemispheres. At various times he commanded several large amphibious attack forces, and later the vast amphibious forces of the Pacific, consisting of thousands of ships and hundreds of thousands of men. In his later years, he commanded the 14th Naval District and the Hawaiian Sea Frontier, the Armed Forces Staff College, and the Western Sea Frontier consisting of the 11th, 12th, and 13th Naval districts, and the Pacific Reserve Fleet; and
Whereas, one of the divisions which he landed on the Normandy beaches on D-day was the 29th, which consisted quite largely of Virginia troops; and
385
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Whereas, Admiral Hall has recently retired and has returned tp his native State and now makes his home in Virginia near the city of Alexandria; now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring. That the General Assembly of Virginia congratulates Admiral Hall for his many achievements and expresses the gratitude of this State for the service he has rendered Virginia and the Nation; and
Resolved further. That the Clerk of the House of Delegates is directed to send a suitably prepared copy of this resolution to Admiral John Lesslie Hall, Jr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 387
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 8 8 s ’ -.'O."- .- y ) i f I I I î'î' K U H M I S H Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 38 9 I a I m I I B I n I M M CO XXX^ i O' II S c f sa I n r I B f m 'i ni « Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 9 0 I T: ; I B I g r . i J M i r a i, i r~ r i m i ng ; . . . : V ^ ! in v a s io n p l a n s PlâNNro eOT NOT CHECUTte I r~ ~ l Planned and cvecutcd so 0 DO tOPRIiONCTEAl CORSICA ROtéË Gaêta Noptes Ban' Sofernû grm giti J V 1 SAAoWlA Tarantû SUAPSnCR C rotonp) I I 1ST BR AIRBORNE Mêssina .!! I MUSKET I -M’ ' .1 • I \ FIFTH ARMY ••' m m r n f t n ### «^Moiio ’ 1 SALERNO Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 9 1 s_i I U-; I rq ? irt I k5J I n I c;^ I I ea • I ••* I I 1 lettre P v n /lo n d f ir t h S C 0 T U A I J. I I <1 CuUerccMit» I I |-"rF' ii I rm-' /I f T IRELAND I,! S^ropth ,-■ ' C . Dublin Liverpool ENGLAND in u u i« a Amsterdam Scbrrenio^o llUUlPl * n h « Ir Antwerp Dunicerque Khfrfo FRANCS Ç^*‘B»lbeo UPinisterpe Ml'I M I car I KR-i n rtrs'i mf iMirmimiBciniBiin U.S. NAVAL BASES IN BRITISH ISLES— See legend on next page Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 392 ik«ie=iiEsai*.iaiaairai LEGEND FOR PRECEDITC- I.InP I-A N.E. ATL'.NTIC ' î.îa*p No, Bo so ' 2 Avonmouth, Gloucestershire, England 3 Belfast, North Ireland 4 Calstock, Devonshire, England 5 Cardiff, Glamorganshire, Wales 6 Dartmouth, Devonshire, England 7 Dunkeswell, Devonshire, England , 8 Exeter, Devonshire, England 9 Falmouth, Cornwall, England 10 Fowey, Cornwall, England 11 Glasgow, Scotland 12 Gourock, Scotland 14 Hull, Yorkshire, England 15 Launceston & Ri-llamills, Cornv/all, England 16 Leith, Scotland 17 Liverpool, England 19 Loch Neagh. Ulster, Ireland 20 London, England 21 Londonderry, Ireland 22 nilford H?ven, Wales 24 Ketley, Hampshire, England 25 Newcastle, Northumberland, England 26 The Noro (Deptford), England 27 Pembroke Dock, Wales 28 penarth, Wales 29 Plymouth, Cornvrall, England 128 Poole, Dorsetshire, England 129 Portland, (Weymouth), Dorsetshire, England 30 Rosneath, Scotland (Gore Loch) 31 ' St. Mawas, Cornwall, England 32 Salcombe, Devonshire, England 33 Saltash, England 34 Southampton,' Hampshire, England 35 Teignmouth, Devonshire, England 36 Tidov/orth, (Hedge End, Ludgershall), Tviltshire, England 37 Tiverton, Devonshire, England Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. «p I I I I in I u // 7 j I xxxx I Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 9 4 I E 3 I ra I C 3 I r a I I m I ii .a CO > < w n< (O O1 1J 0(0 w o -J< < _J 0.(0 V.£ u Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 9 5 ICEBERG SCHEME OF MANEUVER EAST CHINA SEA INITIAL OiJCCrive tenth (:09=3udwc RfSI •»TE«l*1 |IC0A?3P£SI ■'■5E 5-(M* N IB .A N 0 S 1 ' r " k Î - \ / Ihj / OPERATION ICEBERG: OKINAWA Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 9 6 11 n I C? __ SCHEME Of MANEUVER OPERATION OlVVPIC R»' I Bi I n I n I I I ■■ I Ka ■ ex. OPERATION OLYMPIC» KYUSHU Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Personal Papers Hall, John Lesslie, Jr. College of William and Mary. Williamsburg, Virginia. Hewitt, H. Kent. Operational Archives, Naval History Division. Washington, D.C. Kirk, Alan G. Operational Archives, Naval History Division. Washington, D.C. Turner, Richmond K. Operational Archives, Naval History Division. Washington, D.C. Oral Histories These memoirs are available at the Operational Archives, Naval History Division, Washington, D.C. Baldwin, Hanson Weightman. United States Naval Institute, 1976. Conolly, Richard L. Oral History Research Office. Columbia University, 1960. Hall, John Lesslie, Jr. Oral History Research Office. Columbia University, 1963. Hewitt, H. Kent. Oral History Research Office. Columbia University, 1962. Kirk, Alan Goodrich. Oral History Research Office. Columbia University, 1962. 397 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 9 8 Official Naval Records and Documents Ail are located at the Operational Archives, Naval History Division, Washington, D.C. Action and Operational Reports of Naval Commands, 1939-1950. Commander in Chief, Atlantic and Atlantic Fleet, U.S. Naval Message Files, 1940-1946. Commander, U.S. Naval Forces, Northwest African Waters, U.S. Naval Message Files, 1943. .Records of Amphibious Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, 1941-1944. Records of the Immediate Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1942-1950. Records of Naval Forces, Europe, 1938-1946. Records of Naval Forces, Northwest African Waters, 1942-1943. Records of the Operations Division, Office of the Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, 1941-1945, Records of the War Plans (later Strategic Plans) Division, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1917-1950. Strategic and Operational Planning Documents, 1941-1945. War Diaries of Naval Commands, 1941-1953. World War II Command File (Miscellaneous Record Material and Publica tions) . Other Naval Sources Log Books. Record Group 24. Navy and Old Army Records Branch. National Archives. Washington, D.C. Navy Flag Files. Record Group 313. General Archives Division. National Records Center. Suitland, Maryland. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 9 9 Other Sources Boatwright, Victor Taliaferro, Jr. Letters to author, 31 March, 24 May, 19 July, 23 August, 5 September, and 10 October 1977. Hall, John Lesslie, Jr. Series of interviews with the author, June 1976-September 1977. Secondary Sources Bibliographical Aids Allard, Dean C. "The Navy 1941-1973." In A Guide to Sources of United States Military History, pp. 514-46. Edited by Robin Higham. Hamden, Conn.; Archon Books, 1975. Naval History Division. Department of the Navy. United States Naval History: A Bibliography. 6 th ed. 1972. Smith, Myron J., Jr., comp. World War II at Sea: A Bibliography of Sources in English. 3 vols. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976. Unpublished Manuscripts Clagett, John H. "Biography of Admiral H. Kent Hewitt." Operational Archives, Naval History Division. Washington, D.C. Hayes, Grace P. "The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in World War II: The War Against Japan." 2 vols. Historical Section, Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1953-1954. Operational Archives, Naval History Division. Washington, D.C. Mason, A. T. "Special Monograph on Amphibious Warfare." World War II Command File, Operational Archives, Naval History Division. Washington, D.C. "United States Naval Administrative Histories of World War II," Ca. 300 unpublished vols.. Navy Department Library, Washington, D.C. Memoirs and Biographies Barbey, Daniel E. MacArthur*s Amphibious Navy: Seventh Amphibious Force Operations, 1943-1945. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1969. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 0 0 Blumenson, Martin. The Patton Papers: 1885-1945. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1972, 1974. Bradley, Omar N. A Soldier's Story. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1951. Buell, Thomas B. The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1974. Butcher, Harry C. My Three Years with Eisenhower: The Personal Diary of Captain Harry C. Butcher, USNR. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1946. Clark, J. J., with Reynolds, Clark G. Carrier Admiral. New York: David McKay Co., 1967. Clark, Mark W. Calculated Risk. New York: Harper & Bros., 1950. Cunningham, Andrew Browne. A Sailor's Odyssey : The Autobiography of Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope. London : Hutchinson & Co., 1951. Dank, Milton. The Glider Gang: An Eyewitness History of World War II Glider Combat. Philadelphia: J. B, Lippincott Co., 1977. Dyer, George Carroll. The Amphibians Came to Conquer: The Story of Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner. 2 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1972. Eisenhower, Dwight D. Crusade in Europe. Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1948. Ellsburg, Edward. The Far Shore. London: Gibbs & Philips, 1961. ______. No Banners, No Bugles. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1949. Essame, H. Patton: A Study in Command. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974. Fane, Francis Douglas, and Moore, Don. The Naked Warriors. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1956. Forrestel, E. P. Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, USN. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1966. Higgins, Edward T., in collaboration with Phillips, Dean. Webfooted Warriors: The Story of a "Frogman" in the Navy During World War II. New York: Exposition Press, 1955. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 0 1 Ingersoll, Ralph M. Top Secret; The Inside Story of the Planning for the European Invasion. New York: Harcourt, 1946. King, Ernest J., and Whitehill, Walter M, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record, New York: Norton, 1952. Leahy, William D. I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time. New York: McGraw'-Hill, 1950. Morgan, Frederick. Overture to Overlord. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1950. Pack, S. W. C. Cunningham the Commander. London: Batsford Books, 1974. Pogue, Forrest C. George C. Marshall: Organizer of Victory, 1943-1945. New York: Viking Press, 1973. Potter, E. B. Nimitz. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1976. Ridgway, Matthew B. Soldier: The Memoirs of Matthew B. Ridgway. As told to Harold Martin. New York: Harper & Bros., 1956. Stanford, Alfred. Force Mulberry: The Planning and Installation of the Artificial Harbor off the U.S. Normandy Beaches in World War II. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1951. Truscott, L. K., Jr. Command Missions: A Personal Story. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1954. Books Abbazia, Patrick. Mr. Roosevelt's Navy; The Private War of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, 1939-1942. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1975. Appleman, Roy E.; Burns, James M.; Gugeler, Russell A.; and Stevens, John. Okinawa: The Last Battle. In United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1948. Baldwin, Hanson W. Battles Lost and Won: Great Campaigns of World War II. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. ______. Great Mistakes of the War. New York: Harper & Bros., 1950. Belote, James, and Belote, William. Typhoon of Steel: The Battle for Okinawa. New York: Harper & Row, 1970. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 0 2 Blumenson, Martin. Salerno to Cassino. In United States Army in World War II; The Mediterranean Theater of Operations. Washington, D.C. Government Printing Office, 1969. ______. Sicily: Whose Victory? New York: Ballantine Books, 1969. Brown, John Mason. Many a Watchful Night. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1944. Bykofsky, Joseph, and Larson, Harold. The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas. In United States Army in World War II: The Technical Services. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1957. Craven, Wesley Frank, and Cate, James Lea, eds. The Army Air Forces in World War II. Vol. 2: Europe: Torch to Pointblank, August 1942 to December 1943. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949. ______. The Army Air Forces in World War II. Vol. 3: Europe : Argument to V-E Day, January 1944 to May 1945. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1951. . The Army Air Forces in World War II. Vol. 5: The Pacific: Matterhorn to Nagasaki, June 1944 to August 1945. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1953. Eisenhower Foundation. D-Day; The Normandy Invasion in Retrospect. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1971. Elsey, George M. "Naval Aspects of Normandy in Retrospect." In D-Day : The Normandy Invasion in Retrospect, pp. 170-97. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1971. Emerson, William R. "F. D. R. (1941-45)." In The Ultimate Decision, pp. 133-78. Edited by Ernest R. May. New York: George Braziller, 1960. Frank, Benis M., and Shaw, Henry I., Jr. Victory and Occupation. In History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1968. Funk, Arthur Layton. The Politics of Torch: The Allied Landings and the Algiers "Putsch," 1942. Lawrence : University Press of Kansas, 1974. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 0 3 Garland, Albert N,, and Smyth, Howard McGaw. Sicily and the Surrender of Italy, In United States Army in World War II; The Mediter ranean Theater of Operations. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1965. Greenfield, Kent Roberts, ed. Command Decisions. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960. Greenfield, Kent Roberts; Palmer, Robert R.; and Wiley, Bell I. The Organization of Ground Combat Troops. In United States Army in World War II: The Army Ground Forces. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1947. Hagan, Kenneth J., ed. In Peace and War; Interpretations of American Naval History, 1775-1978. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978. Hart, B. H. Liddell. History of the Second World War. New York: G. P. P u t n a m ’s Sons, 1971. Hartcup, Guy. Code Name Mulberry: The Planning, Building and Operation of the Normandy Harbours. London: David & Charles, 1977. Heinl, Robert Debs, Jr. Soldiers of the Sea: The United States Marine Corps, 1775-1962. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1962. Higgins, Trumbull. Soft Underbelly: The Anglo-American Controversy Over the Italian Campaign, 1939-1945. New York: Macmillan Co., 1968. Hough, Frank 0.; Ludwig, Verle E.; and Shaw, Henry I. Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal. In History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in ■ World War II. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1956. Howe, George F. Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West. In United States Army in World War II: The Mediterranean Theater of Operations. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1957. Hoyt, Edwin P. How They Won the War in the Pacific: Nimitz and His Admirals. New York: Weybright & Talley, 1970. Hunt, Barry, and Schurman, Donald. "Prelude to Dieppe: Thoughts on Combined Operations Policy in the 'Raiding Period,' 1940-1942." In Naval Warfare in the Twentieth Century, 1900-1945: Essays in Honour of Arthur Marder, pp. 186-209. Edited by Gerald Jordon. London: Croom Helm, 1977. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 0 4 Isely, Jeter A., and Growl, Philip A. The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War; Its Theory, and Its Practice in the Pacific. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951. Jordan, Gerald, ed. Naval Warfare in the Twentieth Century, 1900- 1945: Essays in Honour of Arthur Marder. London; Croom Helm, 1977. Ladd, James D. Assault from the Sea, 1939-45: The Craft, The Landings, The Men. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1976. ______. Commandos and Rangers of World War II. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978. 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Vol. 3: The Offensive: Part I, 1st June 1943-31st May 1944. London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1960. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 0 7 ______. The War at Sea; 1939-1945. Vol. 3; The Offensive; Part II, 1st June 1944-14 August 1945. London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1961. Ruppenthal, Roland G. Logistical Support of the Armies. Vol. 1: May 1941-September 1944. In United States Army in World War II: The European Theater of Operations. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1953. Ryan, Cornelius. The Longest Day: June 6 , 1944. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959. Sainsbury, Keith. The North African Landings, 1942: A Strategic Decision. London: Davis-Poynter, 1976. Schofield, B. B. Operation Neptune. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1974. Stagg, J. M. Forecast for Overlord: June 6 , 1 9 4 4 . New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1971. Steele, Richard W. The First Offensive 1942: Roosevelt, Marshall and the Making of American Strategy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973. Stoler, Mark A. The Politics of the Second Front: American Military Planning and Diplomacy in Coalition Warfare: 1941-1943. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977. Strategic Services Unit, Office of the Assistant Secretary of War, War Department, Washington, D.C. The Overseas Targets: War Report of the OSS. Vol. 2. New York: Walker & Co., 1976. Thompson, R. W. D-Day: Spearhead of Invasion. New York: Ballantine Books, 1968. Thorne, Christopher. Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain and the War Against Japan, 1941-1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Turner, John Frayn. Invasion '44— The First Full Story of D-Day in Normandy. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1959. Tute, Warren. The North African War. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1976. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 0 8 Tute, Warren; Costello, John; and Hughes, Terry. D-Day. New York: Macmillan Co., 1974. Vigneras, Marcel. Rearming the French. In United States Army in World War II: Special Studies. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1957. Wardlow, Chester. The Transportation Corps; Responsibilities, Organiza tion, and Operations. In United States Army in World War II: The Technical Services. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1951. Weigley, Russell F. The American Way of War : A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy. New York : Macmillan Co., 1973. Wilson, Theodore. The First Summit: Roosevelt and Churchill at i Placentia Bay, 1941. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1969. Winton, John. The Forgotten Fleet: The British Navy in the Pacific, 1944-1945. New York: Coward-McCann, 1970. Articles "Amphibs Hit France." All Hands (July 1944):6-11, 52. "Artificial Harbors Floated to France." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 70 (November 1944):1417-19. Assmann, K. "Normandy, 1944." Military Review 34 .(February 1955):86-93. Baldwin, Hanson W. "Amphibious Aspects of the Normandy Invasion." Marine Corps Gazette 28 (December 1944):34. Bast, Homer, "Amphibious Mother Ship." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 74 (March 1948):333-37. Bauer, K. Jack, and Coox, Alan C. "Olympic vs. Ketsu-Go." Marine Corps Gazette 49 (August 1965):32-44. Bill, David S., Jr. "The Amphibious Assault— Fast, Flexible, and Powerful." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 8 8 (October 1962):47-57. Blandy, W. H. P. "Command Relations in Amphibious Warfare." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 77 (June 1951): 569-81. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 0 9 Boatwright, V. T. "What the Army Should Know About Naval Gunfire." Combat Forces Journal 2 (February 1952):30-31. Brooks, Russell. "Casablanca— the French Side of the Fence." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 77 (September 1951):909-25. Cope, Harley F. "Play Ball, Navy," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 69 (October 1943):1311-18. Cushman, Robert E., Jr. "Amphibious Warfare: Naval Weapon of the Future." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 74 (March 1948):301-7. deBeer, G. R. "The Sicilian Campaign." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 69 (December 1943):1624-27. Dyer, George C. "Naval Amphibious Landmarks." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 92 (August 1966):50-60. Griffith, Samuel B. "Amphibious Warfare Yesterday and Tomorrow." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 76 (August 1950):871-75. "Harbors Floated to France." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 70 (November 1944): 1417-19. Heinl, R. D., Jr. "Naval Gunfire: Scourge of the Beaches." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 71 (November 1945):1309-13. ______. "Naval Gunfire Support in Landings." Marine Corps Gazette 29 (September 1945):40-43. . "What the Army Should Know about Naval Gunfire." Combat Forces Journal 2 (October 1951):34-38. Hewitt, H. Kent. "The Allied Navies at Salerno: Operation Avalanche— September, 1943." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 79 (September 1953):959-76. ______. "Executing Operation Anvil-Dragoon." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 80 (August 1954):896-925. . "The Landing in Morocco, November 1942." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 78 (November 1952);1242-53. . "Meeting the Jean Bart's Commander." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 83 (September 1957):1005. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 1 0 f "Naval Aspects of the Sicilian Campaign." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 79 (July 1953): 705-23. . "Planning Operation Anvil-Dragoon." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 80 (July 1954): 731-45. Hunt, Richard C. D. "Naval Gunfire Support in Counterbattery." Marine Corps Gazette 25 (November 1941):21-22, 167. Inoguchi, Rikihei, and Nakajima, Tadashi. "The Kamikaze Attack Corps." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 79 (September 1953): 933-45. Karig, Walter; Freeland, Stephen L.; and Burton, Earl. "Rhinos and Mulberries." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 71 (December 1945): 1415-25. Leighton, Richard M. "Overlord Revisited: An Interpretation of American Strategy in the European War, 1942-1944." American Historical Review 6 8 (July 1963): 919-37. ______. "The Planning for Sicily." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 8 8 (May 1962):90-101. Lowry, F. J. "The Naval Side of the Anzio Invasion." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 80 (January 1954):23-31. McLean, E. R., Jr. "The Armed Forces Staff College." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 78 (August 1952):833-37. McMillian, I. E. "The Development of Naval Gunfire Support of Amphib ious Operations." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 74 (January 1948):1-15. ______. "Gunfire Support Lessons Learned in World War II." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 74 (August 1948):978-89. Marshall, S. L. A. "First Wave at Omaha Beach." Atlantic Monthly 206 (November 1960):67-72. Martin, Paul W. "Kamikaze!" United States Naval Institute Proceedings 72 (August 1946): 1055-57. Miller, John, Jr. "The Casablanca Conference and Pacific Strategy." Military Affairs 13 (Winter 1949):209-15. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 1 1 Moore, Rufus J, "Operation Pluto." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 80 (June 1954); 647-53. "Mulberries: Portable Ports Helped Free France." All Hands (December 1944):10-11. Nohdren, Maynard M, "The Amphibian Tractor, Jack of All Missions." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 72 (January 1946): 13-17. "Operation Neptune." (Pictorial Section). United States Naval Insti tute Proceedings 80 (June 1954):674-85. Orahood, D. W. "Beachmasters— the Amphibious Traffic Cops." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 92 (September 1966) :140-43. Pye, W. S. "Joint Army and Navy Operations." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 50 (December 1924):1963-76; 51 (January 1925):233-45; 51 (March 1925): 386-99; 51 (April 1925):589-99 ; 51 (June 1925): 975-1000. Ruge, Friedrich. "With Rommel Before Normandy." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 80 (June 1954): 613-19. Salzer, Robert S. "The Navy’s Clouded Amphibious Mission." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 104 (February 1978):24-33. Scott, J. Davis. "No Hiding Place— Off Okinawa." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 83 (November 1957):1208-13. Smart, Frank F., Jr. "Leadership: A Case Study." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 84 (March 1958):63-65. Smith, Holland M. "The Development of Amphibious Tactics in the U.S. Navy." Marine Corps Gazette 30 (June 1946):13-18; 30 (July 1946):27-30; 30 (August 1946):26-28, 43-46; 30 (September 1946): 43-47; 30 (October 1946):41-46, 53-55; 30 (November 1946):33-38, 47; 30 (December 1946):42-50; 31 (January 1947):45-52; 31 (Febru ary 1947):31-38; 31 (March 1947):30-38. Weller, Donald M. "Firepower and the Amphibious Assault." Marine Corps Gazette 36 (March 1952):55-61; 36 (April 1952):60-69. _ . "Salvo— Splash! The Development of Naval Gunfire Support in World War II." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 80 (August 1954): 839-49. Yokoi, Toshiyuki. "Kamikazes and the Okinawa Campaign." United States Naval Institute Proceedings 80 (May 1954): 505-13. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.