The situation was vastly different to that which had ruled little more than twelve months previously, when the outline plan for an invasion of the Pas de Calais area of France had had to be abandoned as dangerously impracticable owing to lack of resources.
In the Far East the Japanese southward and eastward aggression had not only been stemmed, but had already begun to be flung back. The Mediterranean was now completely open to shipping. Italy had been forced out of the war, and valuable German divisions were being pinned down by the advance of the British and American troops up the Italian Peninsula. On Germany’s eastern front Russia was now gloriously on the offensive and imposing a dreadful attrition on Hitler’s Wehrmacht. From the air the combined air forces of Britain and America were delivering ever more pulverising attacks on the centres of German war potential and communications, as well as attacking with great effect the oilfields, refineries and synthetic plants upon which German industry and capacity for mechanised warfare depended. In the air over North-western Europe, too, the fighter aircraft of Britain and America were accomplishing an attrition of the resources of the Luftwaffe which promised soon to reduce it to a mere shadow of its former strength. In the Atlantic the U-boats had failed signally to return effectively to the attack and were consistently suffering greater losses than they inflicted. We had reached a point at which the chances were heavily in favour of the safe arrival at its destination without serious loss of any consignment of supplies sent by sea. In the realm of output of ships, special invasion craft, and all types of war equipment and supplies, the lean years had passed, and we were moving towards a period of comparative plenty.
With the general war situation so encouraging, and with the outline plan approved by the responsible heads in both Britain and the United States, the detailed planning—towards a definite goal and an almost definite date—for the invasion of France could proceed rapidly.
On 25 October 1943, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay was appointed Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force, with the short title of ANCXF. This appointment was, in a sense, a supersession of the Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth who had, since April, been considered as the naval Commander-in-Chief designate for the invasion. It was made necessary, however, because a study of the “COSSAC Plan” made it abundantly clear that invasion in the Bay of the Seine area on the scale contemplated would impose such a strain upon the resources of Portsmouth and the neighbouring ports that it would be physically impossible for the Commander-in-Chief in that area to assume any additional duties. Moreover, it was even then obvious that the task of the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force would be so great and so onerous that it would call for the full powers of a man of exceptional ability. These facts were fully appreciated by Admiral Sir Charles Little, the Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, whose direction of affairs in his area subsequently played no small part in ensuring the success of the invasion.
On his appointment as Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay took over the “X staff” from the Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, and Rear-Admiral Creasy, the head of that staff, became Chief of Staff to Admiral Ramsay.
Shortly before D-day, Admiral Ramsay, alluding to Rear-Admiral Creasy, remarked that the first duty of an admiral is to have a good chief of staff. Bertram Ramsay and George Creasy had known each other before. The latter had commanded the First Destroyer Flotilla in the Home Fleet during the early part of the war and had earned a DSO in that command. Then, for three months before the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, he had served in HMS Codrington, commanding the flotilla of destroyers working from Dover, where Admiral Ramsay had been in command. When the Codrington was sunk in Dover harbour by air attack Creasy went to the Admiralty as Director of Anti-Submarine warfare, a post which he held with conspicuous success for just over two years, during which the German U-boat campaign was at its height and our shipping losses and shortage of escorts was causing considerable anxiety. In that appointment George Creasy showed that he was the last man to get flustered or to neglect even the smallest and unimportant facets of a problem, and there is no doubt that the ultimate defeat of the U-boats owed a great deal to measures the foundations of which had been suggested or laid by Creasy and his staff at the Admiralty.
Admiral Ramsay had had more experience than any other naval officer of the planning and conduct of combined operations on the invasion scale. He had planned the naval side of the invasion of French North Africa and had served during that operation as Deputy to the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief—Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham. He had planned the naval component of the invasion of Sicily and had commanded the British Task Force during that invasion. Moreover, he had given much study to the problems involved in a cross-Channel invasion of France.
In the light of his experience, Admiral Ramsay found that he had greatly to increase the personnel of what had been the “X Staff.” Moreover, a complete American section of the staff was created, so that the detailed plans were evolved by a fully integrated combined staff of the two navies.
Admiral Ramsay had an officer of the United States Navy as his personal liaison officer. This officer was Captain Lyman A. Thackery, USN. Before long, too, the American component of the Staff was increased and was put in charge of Rear-Admiral Alan Goodrich Kirk, USN, who was to command the United States Naval Task Force during the actual invasion.
It would have been difficult to find an American officer more suited to that post. Rear-Admiral Kirk was a professional sailor and a gunnery specialist; he had greater experience than any other American naval officer both of British naval methods and of actual invasion, and he and Admiral Ramsay had known one another for some years. When war broke out in September, 1939, Captain Kirk—as he then was—had been United States Naval Attaché in London for three months, and his first war-time task was to interview the master and officers of the Athenia, which was torpedoed within a few hours of the declaration of war, and make a report to President Roosevelt. Captain Kirk had remained as Naval Attaché in London until December, 1940; and during that time he paid several visits to Dover, where he first met Admiral Ramsay. It will be remembered that Captain Kirk on one occasion gave the lie direct to Dr Goebbels, the German propaganda chief, by attending Divine Service on board the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, which the German propagandists had so often and so convincingly “sunk.”
In December, 1940, Kirk, who had been promoted to Rear-Admiral, returned to the United States and became Director of Naval intelligence, but in March, 1942, he was back in England as Chief of Staff to Admiral Harold Stark, commanding the United States Naval forces in the European theatre of war. Then, after a short period of service with the United States Atlantic Fleet, Rear-Admiral Kirk commanded one of the American Assault Forces during the invasion of Sicily. His Assault Force was the most easterly of those in the American sector and, therefore, next to the British sector, which was commanded by Admiral Ramsay. For his work in the invasion of Sicily Rear-Admiral Kirk received the American Legion of Merit and was made an honorary Companion of the Order of the Bath.
Senior officers on board USS Ancon, 6 January 1944. Walking in front are (from left to right): Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk, USN; Rear Admiral John L. Hall, Jr., USN; and Rear Admiral John Wilkes, USN.
At Admiral Ramsay’s headquarters at Norfolk House there reigned a spirit of driving energy, coupled with determination that no small difficulties should become magnified and threaten the goodwill and close co-operation of the Allies. That there should have been small difficulties from time to time was inevitable, for the two navies had very different ways of doing some things.
At one time difficulties arose because the American authorities on the spot were reluctant to take decisions of far-reaching importance without referring them to Washington. Nobody had the slightest desire to keep the high authorities in Washington in the dark regarding the progress and needs of the plan, but the continual reference of comparatively unimportan
t matters to departments in Washington obviously jeopardised secrecy, since it meant that a great many more people were privy to them. Moreover, it greatly increased signal traffic and made for delay. On the other hand, it was all very well for the British to complain, since they were not faced with the difficulties of distance. The Admiralty was a bare five minutes’ walk from Norfolk House, and the Cabinet Offices not much farther. The problem was solved by the departments in Washington giving greater authority to their representatives in London.
A greater difficulty, because it struck at the root of the planning, arose out of the differences between the British and American approaches to a naval plan. The British idea is to have a detailed plan covering every facet of a complicated operation, and Admiral Ramsay, with his experience of planning and carrying out invasions requiring the use of all three arms of an Allied force, was determined that the final plan for the invasion of Normandy would leave nothing to chance and no loophole for error. The American idea of a plan was very different. The Americans were used to being given broad directives but not detailed plans, and they felt that the latter tied them down too rigidly and left no room for the exercise of their own initiative. This point of view was well expressed to Admiral Ramsay by a senior officer of the United States Navy who said: “When I’m wanted to do something I like to be told what to do, but not how to do it. How I do it is my business.”
In principle there is a great deal to be said for the American point of view, particularly in ordinary simple naval operations. It is virile, imaginative, and leaves great scope for the individual commander. In an operation such as the invasion of Normandy, however, it would have led to chaos. In that invasion there was no room for discrepancies in timing or position such as would have been certain to arise if matters had been left to individual initiative. There were many thousands of different parts, even to the initial assault, and yards and minutes might well have meant the difference between success and failure too disastrous to contemplate. Nor could the invasion of Normandy be regarded solely as a combined operation of war—albeit the greatest combined operation ever contemplated.
England is a small and crowded country from which to launch such an operation. Port facilities, internal transport, and coastal transport had to remain available to the ordinary needs of the country if the British people were not to be left without food, light, power or fuel; and the wheels of industry going “all out” on war production were not to slow down and stop. The needs of the invasion, therefore, had to be dovetailed into all these other factors, and even into the movements of convoys to be assembled on the other side of the Atlantic. It was a vast jigsaw puzzle in which the wrong placing of a single piece might throw things out of gear over thousands of miles of distance and vital weeks of time. It was only by rigid and most detailed planning that all these factors could be co-ordinated into a scheme which was not only workable, but left no room for error.
When Admiral Ramsay explained the intricacies of the planning of the invasion to the Americans, who of course were unaccustomed to mounting enormous operations from a small country whose external and internal economy had to be considered in conjunction with the purely naval, military and air aspects, they were quick to see the necessity for detailed and rigid planning. Nevertheless, they still thought that the consequent operations orders for “Operation Neptune” were too voluminous and detailed.
On looking back after the event, Admiral Ramsay was rather inclined to agree with this criticism, and admitted that the orders, as issued to every authority taking part in the invasion, might have been less bulky. He was, however, the last man in the world to risk confusion or failure through under-organisation during the planning stage, and for this, among many other things, both Britain and the United States have great reason to be grateful to him, observing that any slip might well have led to a tremendous increase in the Allied casualties both afloat and ashore.
It seems as well to cite these inter-Allied difficulties and to examine their causes, for their very smallness in relation to the gigantic enterprise of the invasion of Northern France is a measure of the accord which existed; while to pretend that there were no difficulties would be to argue an impossible perfection, and thus to open the door to such canards as Dr Goebbels would have greatly liked to foster. In fact, there were no canards at the time, nor have there been any since concerning the naval side of the invasion, although one such has appeared regarding the military side, alleging that Mr Winston Churchill and General Eisenhower both chose a military commander of whose ability they were doubtful.
Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey, RN (centre of photograph), with Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk, USN to his left. They are on a tour of the photographic laboratory on board USS Ancon, 8 March 1944. The ship’s Commanding Officer, Captain P. L. Mather, USN, is conducting the tour.
In the month after the appointment of Sir Bertram Ramsay as Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief, Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory and Sir Bernard Paget were appointed as the commanders of the air and military components respectively of the British invasion forces. Sir Bernard Paget was then commanding the 21st Army Group, which was designated as the British Expeditionary Force.
There was still no Supreme Allied Commander designate, and it seemed probable that Sir Bernard Paget’s command of the 21st Army Group was of only a temporary nature. Nevertheless, both these air and military commanders had had experience in the planning of combined operations, and as soon as they had settled down and collected the requisite staffs, the combined planning began at the headquarters of No. 21 Army Group.
It may be as well to explain here that the planning of the naval side of the operation—which was by far the most complicated from the point of view of both planning and execution—was already fairly far advanced. It continued in the purely naval sense while the combined planning began at the headquarters of the 21st Army Group on 15 December 1943. This combined planning was a matter of fitting the naval, air and military plans together into what might be termed “the master plan” for the whole operation of invasion.
CHAPTER II
SHIPS AND YET MORE SHIPS
First naval requirements—Admiralty reactions—Possible German strength—General Montgomery appointed—His requirement of a larger scale of assault—Planning on the new basis—Appointment of Rear-Admiral Sir Philip Vian—Ever-increasing naval needs.
By the middle of December, 1943, when the Combined Planning of the invasion of Northern France began at the Headquarters of No. 21 Army Group, the naval plan had crystallised to a point at which Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay could make some preliminary estimate of the naval requirements for the invasion. The naval plan was at that time based upon the outline “COSSAC Plan” which had been approved by the Combined Chiefs of Staff at Quebec.
In December, 1943, it was still believed that no United States naval forces would take part in “Neptune.” It had been agreed by Mr Churchill and President Roosevelt at their meeting in Cairo that the naval forces required for the invasion of Normandy would he provided by the British Navy, with such assistance as could be given by the Dominion navies and by the navies of our European allies. It was realised that, with the best will in the world, these Dominion and Allied contributions would be small by comparison with the total naval requirements.
Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay—the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief—was of the opinion that the United States Navy would, in the event, wish to be adequately represented. That, however, was then only an opinion, and an opinion is not a good substitute for warships. Admiral Ramsay could not plan on an opinion.
On the other hand, the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief well appreciated the degree to which British naval resources had for so long been extended by the conduct of war in every sea. He was therefore determined that he would not add to the burdens of the Admiralty by making demands beyond those which he considered the absolute minimum necessary to ensure the safety of the invasion troops and of their supplies and reinforcements. He set his face resolutely agai
nst the temptation to work on the principle that “the more you ask for, the more you are likely to get”; and he drilled his staff and examined their findings accordingly.
Nevertheless, the preliminary estimate of the naval requirements for the invasion of Normandy made up a very formidable list. This list the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief laid before the Admiralty during the second week of December, 1943.
It amounted to:
2 battleships.
3 monitors (or battleships).
15 cruisers.
107 destroyers (of which 20 might be old destroyers).
48 frigates or corvettes.
64 anti-submarine trawlers.
108 motor launches.
120 motor torpedo boats and motor gunboats.
That was a total of 467 warships! Nor was that all, for the figure made no allowance for the minesweeping force which would be necessary. It was appreciated that the invasion of Normandy would entail the greatest minesweeping operation in naval history, and Admiral Ramsay’s staff found itself quite incapable of providing for the minesweeping requirements with less than twelve flotillas of minesweepers—six flotillas of big “Fleet” minesweepers and six flotillas of the smaller motor minesweepers for inshore work off the beaches. By the time allocation had been made for dan-buoy layers, and spare minesweepers to ensure against a breakdown of the minesweeping plan due to casualties, the minesweeping requirements amounted to close on 150 vessels.
Operation Neptune Page 4