by Mark Zuehlke
So it was that at the end of July 1942 the Americans reluctantly agreed to abandon Sledgehammer in favour of offensive operations in French North Africa, one of the Axis power’s most far-flung outposts. Vichy France—a puppet regime established after the French surrender in 1940—had little military strength in the region and any invasion there would necessitate Hitler’s countering it with German troops. The decision to undertake operations here represented a political victory for Churchill’s favoured strategy of chipping away Germany’s strength through operations in the Mediterranean, which he considered Europe’s “soft underbelly.” It also meant that there would be no invasion across the English Channel until 1943 at the earliest and more realistically, 1944.5 It was going to be a long war.
EVEN AS MEDITERRANEAN OPERATIONS were initiated, Britain’s Combined Operations Headquarters (COHQ), which included planners from all the armed services, started studying the tactical requirements for a successful invasion of northwest Europe. Various commando raids on the European coast were meticulously reviewed for the lessons that could be learned and applied to a larger operation. On March 28, 1942, a major raid had been launched against the U-boat pens at St. Nazaire and the facility considerably damaged despite heavy casualties to the attacking force. Emboldened by this raid’s limited success, COHQ’s commander Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten decided to undertake a much larger-scale raid of Dieppe, a French resort town and port.
On August 19, 1942, a 6,000-strong Allied force that counted in its ranks 4,963 Canadians attempted to land on the beaches fronting Dieppe. The raid, which marked Canada’s combat debut in Europe, ended in disaster. The invaders were slaughtered on the beach. Only 2,210 Canadians returned to Britain, with 28 later dying of wounds. During the battle, 807 were killed and 82 of the 1,946 taken prisoner died in captivity.
For Canada, the raid was a grim tragedy that became immediately the source of an endless debate on its merits. But the planners at COHQ drew from the bloody failure a number of lessons that fundamentally influenced their strategy for the northwest Europe invasion. The rapid German reaction at Dieppe warned that any Channel port would be heavily fortified and manned by large numbers of German troops. They therefore abandoned the idea of launching an amphibious landing in close proximity to a major port, setting the wheels in motion to create temporary port facilities that could be established on landing beaches secured by the assault forces.
A vital lesson learned from Dieppe was that the landing force had been inadequately supported by naval and air force bombardment. “The need for overwhelming fire support, including close support, during the initial stages of the attack” was recognized as fundamental to winning a beachhead.6 While battleships, heavy and light cruisers, and destroyers arrayed in sufficient number could smother the objective under a massive bombardment, these ships were unable to press sufficiently near to shore to provide “close support.” Inevitably, they must cease firing for fear of striking the first assault waves just when their guns were most critically needed to keep the Germans cowering in their shelters. New ships capable of operating in extremely shallow waters would have to be developed. It was also deemed critical that means be found to unleash “the fire power of the assaulting troops while still sea-borne.”7 If the artillery, tanks, mortars, and heavy machine guns of the invading forces could bring their weapons to bear from the decks of special landing craft, the infantry could hit the beach supported by the same kind of overwhelming fire that would support them in a traditional land battle.
The Royal Navy decided to form a permanent naval assault force “with a coherence comparable to that of any other first line fighting formations.”8 Not only must the navy develop specially trained personnel capable of delivering troops safely onto a beach and then effectively supporting them, but the army must train its assault troops to work in close cooperation with the naval force. A team effort was required.
Some of these principles were put to the test during the invasion of French North Africa in November 1942. But it was the Sicily invasion of July 10, 1943 that served as a dress rehearsal, with heavy naval gunfire and aerial bombardment pounding the Italian defenders virtually senseless. Close support provided by a variety of special landing craft mounting heavy guns, rocket batteries, and mortars then denied them any respite before the Allied troops stormed ashore. Other purpose-specific craft made it possible to move infantry, tanks, and artillery quickly onto the beaches. The Landing Craft, Tank (LCT) was able to sail right up to the beach and drop a ramp, down which tanks trundled straight into the battle. Landing Craft Infantry, Large simultaneously put two hundred soldiers on the ground within minutes of dropping its ramps, although these craft were too bulky to be utilized in the first landing wave. That initial assault force went ashore in Landing Craft, Assault (LCA), flat-bottomed open craft capable of carrying a platoon and its equipment.
The landings in Sicily were a great success but the defenders were few and of poor quality. It was unlikely any landing in northwest Europe would face such half-hearted resistance. Still, the basic tactics and equipment were in place to make a landing feasible. There remained, however, the problem of determining where the invasion would occur, when, and who would be involved.
WITH THE INVASION of Italy, it was clear that the winds of war now blew more favourably for the Allies. Several months earlier, on February 2, 1943, the remaining 91,000 survivors of Generalfeldmarschall Friedrich Paulus’s starving and exhausted Sixth Army had surrendered at Stalingrad. Their defeat followed an unparallelled, brutal six-month battle in which more than 200,000 Germans had perished amidst the ruins of the city. Such devastating casualties were impossible to replace. Then had come the destruction in May 1943 of the Afrika Korps during the battle for Tunisia, which marked the end of Germany’s presence in Africa. Sicily had brought more German losses and the drain of strength continued in Italy as the Allies moved onto the mainland in September 1943. In Russia, the Germans faced one reversal after another. That Hitler had lost the initiative was clear. On both the Russian and Mediterranean fronts, Germany was fighting defensively. The heady days of blitzkrieg were over and the Germans were steadily, if slowly, being pressed back into Fortress Europe.
The invasion of Italy had secured a toehold inside that fortress but it was a tenuous one, proving difficult to expand. Despite attempts to achieve a breakthrough that would send the Germans reeling north and open the way for a drive into Austria—Churchill’s vaunted back door into Germany—the U.S. Fifth Army, and British Eighth Army, which included in its ranks 27,000 Canadians, were able to advance only slowly and at the price of heavy casualties. To the east, the Russians faced a long, hard march to reclaim thousands of square miles of homeland before being in a position to start driving through Poland towards Germany.
As these events were playing out, the Allies realized the situation was so improved that an invasion of northwest Europe might be possible in the spring of 1944. The Combined Chiefs of Staff appointed British Lieutenant General Frederick E. Morgan to the position of Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC) and assigned him the duty of planning “a full scale assault against the continent in 1944 as early as possible.”9
The rancorous Trident conference in May 1943, held in Washington, had seen the British and Americans sharply divided over the amount of resources and personnel that should be allocated to Sicily and following Italian campaigns. The Americans were as keen to limit these to mere holding actions as the British were to decisively drive Italy out of the war and develop Churchill’s soft-underbelly strategy to break into central Europe. An uneasy compromise was reached whereby operations would be more vigorous in the Mediterranean than the Americans liked, while a cross-channel invasion was to be launched on May 1, 1944.
This invasion would be an all-out effort involving five infantry divisions in the first assault, two more quickly following, two airborne divisions landing inland of the invasion site, and twenty more divisions subsequently moving into the beachhea
d to undertake offensive operations to rapidly expand the lodgement. Even before the conference wrapped up, however, planners cautioned that there were not enough landing craft to make a five-division operation feasible. The plan was quickly altered so that the British would provide two assault divisions and one follow-on division and the Americans one assault division and one follow-on division.
Decisions made, the conference adjourned and Morgan got down to work. Under his direction, an integrated Anglo-American staff of officers drawn from all three services set about developing the specific invasion plan, codenamed Operation Overlord. Among these officers was Canadian Major R.A. Harris, who served as Morgan’s Military Assistant.10 Also stationed in Morgan’s headquarters was a Canadian liaison officer, Major General G.R. Turner, whose primary responsibility was to keep First Canadian Army commander Lieutenant General Andrew McNaughton abreast of planning details. McNaughton was to be kept in the know not because he was the commander of First Canadian Army, but rather because he was also “the accredited military representative of the Canadian Government in the U.K.” Turner’s presence was not welcomed by the British Chiefs of Staff, but Morgan told his staff—British and American—that there was a “tacitly conceded” agreement to keep the Canadians informed of the developing invasion plan.11
On July 3, 1943, McNaughton was able to summon Lieutenant General Harry Crerar, then commanding I Canadian Corps, to inform him that 3rd Canadian Infantry Division would begin assault training in preparation for a possible role in the cross-channel invasion. Crerar’s corps headquarters was to have responsibility for the division’s “training and operations.”12
Less than four months later, however, due partly to Crerar’s persistent lobbying, I Canadian Corps was ordered to join the Eighth Army in Italy. This ended McNaughton’s hopes of keeping the Canadian army overseas together as a cohesive force that would play a significant role in the invasion. Instead, on November 12, 1943, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division with 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade attached came under command of the 1st British Corps “for operational direction and the training related thereto for the purpose of Operation Overlord.”13
Meanwhile, plans for Overlord had been firming up quickly since the conclusion of the Washington conference. On July 15, 1943, Morgan had submitted his invasion plan to the British Chiefs of Staff and summarized it in a ten-point covering letter. First, he reiterated the task assigned and set out the primary challenges that must be overcome. The most critical of these was the need to rapidly “improvise sheltered anchorages off the beaches” through which reinforcements and supplies could flow to enable the beachhead’s expansion. Of equal concern was the lack of sufficient and suitable craft. Increased production and reallotment of such craft from other theatres would be required. Furthermore, it might be necessary to postpone the date of the assault to allow the assembling of a suitably large flotilla.
A May 1 invasion, Morgan wrote, could be launched “only if we concentrate our efforts on an assault across the Norman beaches about Bayeux.” It was here—midway between the two French ports of Cherbourg on the Cotentin Peninsula and le Havre at the mouth of the Seine River—that Morgan believed the Germans were least prepared to repel an invasion.
Finally, Morgan cautioned his superiors not to be lulled into over-optimism by the success of the Sicily landing that had occurred just five days earlier. The two operations, he said, “could hardly be more dissimilar. In Husky [codename for the Sicily invasion], the bases of an extended continental coastline were used for a converging assault against an island, whereas in Overlord it is necessary to launch an assault from an island against an extended continental mainland coastline. Furthermore, while in the Mediterranean the tidal range is negligible and the weather reasonably reliable, in the English Channel the tidal range is considerable and the weather capricious.”14
THE BRITISH CHIEFS OF STAFF accepted the plan in principle and passed it forward for discussion by the Combined Chiefs of Staff at the Quadrant Conference in Quebec City on August 14, who granted approval the following day. It was recognized that a supreme commander must be appointed to oversee Overlord, but no decision was reached during the conference on who should fill such a post. The Americans did accept, however, British recommendations that Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder be named Deputy Supreme Commander, that the naval commander should be Admiral Sir Charles Little, RN (soon replaced by Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, RN), and that Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Fighter Command, RAF, should be air commander.
Recognizing that in the long haul the northwest Europe campaign would see more American than Commonwealth divisions employed, Churchill suggested that Roosevelt name an American to the supreme commander post. Roosevelt could not offer an immediate recommendation and would not do so until Christmas Eve, when he appointed General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then serving as Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean Theatre. During the course of the Sicily and Italian campaigns, Eisenhower had shown a talent for keeping a variety of prickly-natured subordinate officers at the army and corps levels working together despite differing nationalities and personalities.15
Eisenhower did not, however, get everything his way. When he proposed that General Sir Harold Alexander command the British Army Group, the British War Cabinet rebuffed this notion. Instead, they appointed Eighth Army commander General Sir Bernard Montgomery—precisely the man Eisenhower had hoped to prevent getting the appointment. The American general considered Montgomery abrasive, cocky to the point of conceit, and impossible to control. Because the British Army Group Commander also served as the operational chief of the landings, Eisenhower found the War Cabinet’s decision difficult to swallow because Montgomery would have overall control over the invasion plan and its prosecution.16
During the Quebec conference, Churchill had been concerned that Morgan’s proposal for Overlord was based on too limited an allocation of assault forces. He recommended that “every effort should be made to add at least 25 percent strength to the initial assault.”17
Eisenhower was inclined to agree and Montgomery also didn’t like the sounds of the plan. Arriving in London on January 3, 1944, Montgomery told Admiral Ramsay “that the assaults were not being made on a wide enough front, or with a sufficiency of force, and that it was necessary to extend them, both to introduce a greater number of formations on D-Day and also to accelerate the capture of Cherbourg.”18
Montgomery set out a new landing scheme on February 1. Operation Neptune, as the naval and amphibious assault phase of the invasion was now designated, divided the landing sites between two armies. The Second British Army would go in on the left, with the First United States Army landing on the right. In the first assault, five British infantry brigades and three U.S. regimental combat teams would hit the beach. These units would be under the direction of five different divisions. Additionally, two airborne divisions would be dropped on the American flank during the night preceding the seaborne landings and another on the British flank. Here, the British 6th Airborne Division would carry out the airborne drop. This division’s 3rd Parachute Brigade Group included the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion. One of the British divisions engaged in the amphibious landing would be the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division. Because the addition of troops to the initial assault would require many more landing craft than currently available, the date for the invasion was pushed back to June 1, 1944.19
NOTES
1 Col. C.P. Stacey, The Victory Campaign: The Operations in North-West Europe, 1944–1945, vol. 3 (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1960) 4.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., 5–6.
6 Ibid., 7.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., 14.
10 Ibid., 13–15.
11 Ibid., 29.
12 Ibid., 34.
13 Ibid.
14 F.E. Morgan, “War Document, F.E. Morgan to British Chiefs of Staff,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 July 1
943, 1998–1999., n.p.
15 Stacey, 19–21.
16 Carlo D’Este, Decision in Normandy: The Unwritten Story of Montgomery and the Allied Campaign (London: Penguin Books, 2001), 50–51.
17 Stacey, 21.
18 Maj. J.R. Martin, “Report No. 147 Historical Section Canadian Military Headquarters: Part One: The Assault and Subsequent Operations of 3 Cdn Inf Div and 2 Cdn Armd Bde, 6–30 June 44—N.W. Europe,” Directorate of History, Department of National Defence, 3 December 1945, para. 12.
19 Stacey, 21.
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