Between 0430 and 0641 hours the American destroyer USS Rodman guarded minesweepers that were busy clearing the channels to the beaches and then spent two hours bombarding shore targets. Subsequently she was placed on fire support and anti-aircraft screening duties, roles she conducted until retiring to Palermo on the 17th.
Alpha’s beach was bombarded by the combined firepower of a battleship, a cruiser, 5 light cruisers and 6 destroyers. Likewise Delta was subjected to heavy shelling by 2 battleships, 6 light cruisers and 8 destroyers. The bombardment group covering Camel consisted of a battle ship, a cruiser, 5 light cruisers and 11 destroyers. A battleship, a cruiser, 3 light cruisers and 4 destroyers covered the much smaller Sitka Force landings.
As well as the warships, fire support was provided by a variety of converted armed landing craft including the Landing Ship Medium (Rocket) and Land Craft Infantry (Gun) and (Rocket). Also there were Landing Craft, Support (Large) which were purpose-built gunboats based on the LCI, while Landing Craft Support (Small) were converted Landing Craft Personnel (Large) which could carry machine-guns and rockets. The formidable LCT(R)s carried 1,094 5-inch rockets with a range of 3,200 metres, and what these lacked in accuracy they made up for with sheer volume. Task Force Alpha was allocated 12 fire support craft, Task Force Delta 8 and Task Force Camel 7. All these vessels provided a further battering for the German defenders.
Churchill comes round
At 0800 on the 15th Churchill was ferried from the Royal Scotsman over to the destroyer HMS Kimberley heading towards the French coast. Brooke was delighted that his unrelenting taskmaster was now absent. ‘Life has a quiet and peaceful atmosphere about it now that Winston is gone,’ he wrote. ‘Everything gets done twice as quickly.’
Always with an eye on history and his place in it, Churchill now accompanied the invasion fleet, but slept through the initial landings. Later he stood on the deck while passing American troops yelled ‘Winnie, Winnie!’, unaware that he had done everything in his power to derail Dragoon. Unimpressed, and perhaps still sulking, he retired to his cabin to read. He later noted bitterly: ‘One of my reasons for making public my visit was to associate myself with this well-conducted but irrelevant and unrelated operation.’ He viewed the whole operation as a waste of time and lives, and recorded: ‘Here we saw long rows of boats filled with American storm troops steaming in continuously to the Bay of St Tropez. As far as I could see or hear, not a shot was fired either at the approaching flotillas or on the beaches. The battleships had now stopped firing, as there seemed to be nobody there.’
Just after midday, wrote Churchill to his wife, ‘we found ourselves in an immense concourse of ships, all sprawled along twenty miles of coast with poor St Tropez in the centre. It had been expected that the bombardment would continue all day, but the air [attack] and the ships had practically silenced the enemy guns by 8 o’clock. This rendered the proceedings rather dull.’ Nevertheless, Churchill later told King George VI, ‘Your majesty knows my opinion of the strategy, but the perfect execution of the plan was deeply interesting.’
After the months of bickering over Dragoon, on the actual day there was an air of unreality to the proceedings, as Captain Butcher observed:
Today is D-Day for Anvil, but while the press conference was in progress, starting at 9.15, we had no word that it actually had taken place, although we were informed that H-Hour was 8 a.m. Ike merely told the reporters to listen to their radios during the day for interesting information. He was asked if he would have command of the invasion in southern France and he said ‘Eventually’, but asked them to ‘lay off the subject for the time being’.
Clearly Eisenhower was trying to avoid rubbing salt into Churchill’s wounds by immediately usurping General Wilson’s authority in the Mediterranean. Once he had done so, it would be all too obvious that America was firmly in the driving seat. The last thing he wanted was the press trumpeting his leadership of both invasions of France.
Eisenhower’s recollection of the situation was far more generous than Churchill’s:
As usual the Prime Minister pursued the argument up to the very moment of execution. As usual, also, the second that he saw he could not gain his own way, he threw everything he had into support of the operation. He flew to the Mediterranean to witness the attack and I heard that he was actually on a destroyer to observe the supporting bombardment when the attack went in.
It seems Churchill saw no further point in dragging out the issue. ‘The Prime Minister has come around magnificently,’ reported Ike’s naval aide, ‘and has sent Ike a glowing message, after watching the landings in southern France, that the results of all the Allies’ efforts may eclipse the Russian victories.’
The latter, of course, was wishful thinking; nothing would eclipse Stalin’s Bagration and Lvov-Sandomierz summer offensives, which had all but shattered the German armed forces on the Eastern Front. The scale and speed of the unravelling of Hitler’s defences in France was nothing compared to the disasters that had engulfed his troops in Byelorussia, Ukraine and Poland.
Harry Butcher recalled:
We have just heard from Major-General Alexander M. Patch, veteran of Guadalcanal, who commands the US 7th Army in the southern landings. He says the operation seems successful.
Our old friend Lucian Truscott is commanding the VI Corps, which is comprised of the 3rd, 36th and 45th Divisions, which were the assault divisions. These were supported by airborne troops, Rangers, Commandos, French Commandos, and the 1st Special Service under Major-General Robert T. Frederick (formerly of the Operations Division). All assault divisions reported successful breaching of beach defences in [their] target areas and the attack was proceeding according to plan.
Riviera assault
The main assault on the beaches commenced at 0800 and there was no stopping the fleet of Allied warships and landing craft bearing the American and French troops. Initially some twenty Sherman DD tanks were launched, all of which landed safely, but in the light of the weakness of the German resistance another sixteen were put ashore.
The US 3rd Infantry Division landed on the left at Alpha Beach (Cavalaire-sur-Mer), the 45th in the centre on Delta Beach (St Tropez) and the 36th on the right on Camel Beach (San Raphael). French commando units had already landed between Cannes and Hyères and secured the flanks. In the Alpha sector, Major-General J.W. O’Daniel’s 3rd Division quickly picked its way inland and struck out in three directions. The 7th Infantry swept on to capture Cavalaire, while to the north troops of the 15th Infantry fought their way past minefields and machine-gun nests on their way into St Tropez. They arrived in mid-afternoon to be greeted by American paratroops (who had landed in the wrong place) and jubilant FFI soldiers, who had been fighting on and off for hours. The former had already captured the 240-strong garrison, along with two coastal batteries and an anti-aircraft battery. By nightfall the St Tropez area was clear of German troops.
In the 36th Infantry Division’s sector the four assault beaches were codenamed Red, Yellow, Green and Blue. None of them was an ideal landing point. Red Beach was at the small port of San Raphael, which was the most important port in the entire US 7th Army’s landing zone, because not only was it necessary for resupply of troops ashore, but also it was located near an airfield. Thanks to the local garrison, it was heavily defended by underwater obstacles, concrete pillboxes and gun emplacements, and immediately in front of the beach was a stone sea wall about 5 feet high. Inland from the beach and flanking it on the eastern side was the resort town of San Raphael itself and just beyond that the old stone city of Fréjus. The capture of Fréjus and San Raphael were priority missions that had to be accomplished swiftly.
Protected by submarine mine netting and flanked by extensive fire zones, Yellow Beach in front of the town of Agay was just a small horse-shoe-shaped inlet. Because of its defences any idea of a direct assault here was quickly abandoned. Enemy fortifications also obstructed Green Beach, a 250-metre-long rocky strip backed by a sharp incline near Cape
Drammont. This was thought to be too small for a large landing, while Blue Beach, a few kilometres from Green, could accommodate only two small boats at a time.
It was decided that the 141st Infantry Regiment would attack Green Beach with two battalions and Blue with one at H-Hour, in order to secure these beaches, capture Agay and protect the division’s right. The 143rd Infantry was to follow up and push to the west to seize the heights overlooking San Raphael and Red Beach, thereby assisting the 142nd. The troops of the 142nd would land 6 hours later and, with the 143rd, would capture San Raphael, the airfield and Fréjus. Once off the beaches the troops were to strike inland to a depth of 20 km, resist any German counter-attacks from the Cannes area to the right, and push up the Argens river valley on the left to contact the paratroop force dropped near Le Muy.
At 0800 Colonel John W. Harmony’s soldiers of the 141st began their assault. On Green Beach the 2nd Battalion struck to the right, the 3rd to the left. Miraculously, the defenders were taken by surprise and their machine-guns remained silent until the fourth wave had landed, by which time it was too late. Two hours later both Drammont and Cape Drammont, surrounding Green Beach, were reported clear. Casualties were light. Marching north through Agay, the 2nd Battalion encountered resistance from the defenders of Yellow Beach, while the 3rd Battalion seized the high ground directly north of Green Beach. On Blue Beach the Germans offered heavier resistance, with several antitank guns shelling the incoming landing craft of the 1st Battalion, 141st. However, this defence was soon neutralised and the battalion drove the Germans from the craggy dominating heights, with 1,200 men laying down their arms.
Colonel Paul Adams’ 143rd Infantry, immediately following the 141st, came ashore in battalions on Green Beach, the 1st at 0945, the 2nd at 1000 and the 3rd at 1035. The 1st Battalion’s immediate mission was to secure ‘Grand Defend’, the high ground to the north-west, and then the regiment pushed west, parallel to the shoreline, towards San Raphael.
On the far right the 36th Division ran into trouble. The landings at both Green and Blue Beaches went to plan, but Red Beach, where the 142nd Infantry Regiment was due to come ashore, was obstructed by mined concrete blocks, double rows of barbed wire, more mines and a combined trench and anti-tank wall that was 3.5 metres high. This wall was protected by German machine-gunners, while German 75mm, 88mm, 100mm and 105mm guns ranged in on the American minesweepers. Subsequent shelling by the fleet’s battleships, cruisers and destroyers and bombing by a flight of B-24 Liberators failed to silence this German artillery. At 1100 hours the 142nd Infantry loaded into assault boats and headed for Red Beach, which they were due to hit at 1400. Here, though, the German defences had withstood all the bombing and those mine-clearing craft nearing the shore were shelled and sunk. To make matters worse, specially designed robot demolition boats, sent in just prior to the first wave, had clogged the beaches, which remained at the mercy of German flanking fire from San Raphael and the hills beyond Fréjus. With Green Beach open and undefended, the Naval Commander tried to order the 142nd Infantry to go there instead but communications between the admiral and the divisional commander were not working.
Heavy shore fire foiled the first landing attempt, after which Rear Admiral Lewis finally got through to redirect the 142nd Infantry east to Green Beach. The landing commenced at 1530. Colonel G.E. Lynch’s regiment then swung in an arc north and west over the mountains between the 143rd and the 141st to attack Fréjus from the rear. The 143rd was ordered to clear Red Beach from the rear after it had seized San Raphael. There was to be no respite overnight as the troops hurried to broaden the newly won beachhead and secure their assigned objectives. Both Fréjus and San Raphael were cleared in the early morning by the 142nd and the 143rd. Red Beach was finally secured. Some 10 km inland the 141st surprised Germans travelling along the Cannes-Fréjus highway and placed blocks on all roads to Cannes near La Napoule.
While the Allied airborne landings suffered heavy losses (only 60 per cent of the paratroops landed on their drop zones and about fifty gliders were lost), the seaborne landings themselves were not opposed with much fervour and Allied losses amounted to just 95 killed and 385 wounded, a far cry from the huge casualties suffered during the Normandy D-Day landings. German forces by comparison lost over 2,000 men, with the bulk of them taken prisoner. There was no firing on the Allied fleet and 40 per cent of the prisoners taken were anti-Soviet Russians who had volunteered to fight Stalin, but had found themselves in the south of France on the receiving end of the Western Allies’ offensive. Those who did offer token resistance were swiftly dealt with.
Over 94,000 men and 11,000 vehicles came ashore on that first day. The 3rd and 45th Infantry Divisions were soon pressing towards Marseilles and the Rhône, while the 36th made their way towards the Route Napoleon and Grenoble. The follow-up forces, including the US VI Corps Headquarters, the US 7th Army Headquarters and the French II Corps (1st Armoured, 1st Motorised and 3rd Algerian and 9th Colonial Divisions) came ashore the following day and passed through VI Corps on the Marseilles road. Due to the rapidity of the advance, the lack of fuel became a greater impediment than German resistance. What followed was dubbed ‘the champagne campaign’.
Meanwhile, Frederick’s 1st Airborne Task Force pushed south and west, liberating local small towns and making contact with the FFI and Truscott’s advancing forces, thereby sealing off the coast to the Germans. On 16 August units from the 509th Parachute Infantry and 550th Glider Infantry Battalions, with support from tanks of the 45th Division, drove the German defenders out of Le Muy. On the night of the 16th the 142nd broke the last German road-block before Le Muy in the Argens valley. Next day the paratroopers, who had landed nearby, were contacted and Draguignan was entered. In the town the local German corps commander, completely befuddled by the sharpness and speed of the Allied attack, was seized along with his entire staff. After two days on French soil VI Corps had secured a perimeter that extended some 32 km inland.
Blaskowitz’s response
On the first day of Dragoon the Germans proved incapable of responding in a coordinated way, echoing the confusion that had confronted Operation Overlord on 6 June. At daybreak Botsch telephoned Blaskowitz’s Chief of Staff General Heinz von Gyldenfeldt from the 19th Army’s Headquarters at Avignon to say: ‘The invasion fleet is approaching the coast off St Tropez. Therefore, we feel certain that the landings will take place there.’ In fact the first reports of landings came from Marseilles.
General Wiese tried to establish a defence line using the 242nd Infantry Division in the Toulon area, the 244th guarding Marseilles with elements of the 189th and 198th as they came across the Rhône. Unfortunately for him the US 3rd Infantry struck on the boundary between the German LXII Corps’ 242nd and 148th Infantry Divisions. The latter was formed at Metz in October 1942. Comprising the 8th and 239th Reserve Grenadier Regiments and a panzerjäger company, it had served in Italy and France under Generalleutnant Otto Schönherr.
General Baptist Kniess’s LXXXV Corps controlled Generalleutnant Hans Schäfer’s 244th and General Rene de l’Homme de Courbiere’s 338th Infantry Divisions. The 244th was formed in September 1943 and consisted of three Grenadier regiments, the 932nd, 933rd and 934th, and an artillery regiment; Schäfer had assumed command in mid-April 1944. But Kniess’s forces could achieve little and reinforcements summoned from other divisions amounted to little more than five battalions of men. They were unable to intervene quickly as the Rhône bridges were down following Allied air attacks. The following day two battalions would make a feeble attack towards Draguignan to try to reach LXII Corps’ headquarters.
By the morning of the 15th General von Wietersheim’s 11th Panzer Division was bearing down on the Allies’ developing beachhead. Allied air attacks had missed a solitary bridge over the Rhône at Pont-St-Esprit 40 km north of Avignon. Von Wietersheim ordered his panzers to swing north from Avignon but his reconnaissance units were soon reporting that the bridge had just been destroyed in an air raid. Hitler had miss
ed his chance by just 12 hours.
At Toulon it was now the German garrison’s turn to scuttle the remaining French warships. They attempted to sink the Strasbourg and La Galissonnière in order to block the southern channel, but American Mitchell bombers sank them first.
All day during the 15th and through the night the Luftwaffe continually bombed the Allied fleet. A landing craft was sunk and at night German E-boats darted in and out of the ships doing quite a lot of damage. As early as 0100 hours Fliegerdivision 2 instructed KG 26 and III/KG 100 to attack the shipping in the Toulon-Marseilles area. However, the first raid did not occur until 0510, when JGr 200 scrambled a formation of about a dozen Bf 109s from its 1 and 2 Staffeln. Predictably enough, Allied fighters were waiting for them and they bumped into the P-38 Lightnings of 1st Fighter Group on ‘Grapes’ patrol (relays of twelve P-38s patrolling at 12–15,000 feet) between Fréjus and the Hyères Islands before they even reached the fleet. In the ensuing dogfight two Bf 109s were shot down and the rest of the force turned tail. In the meantime the Luftwaffe dispatched whatever reinforcements it could spare, with Luftflotte 2 sending some twenty-eight Bf 109s of II/JG 77 from Ghedi in Italy, bound for Orange-Caritat, with the rest of the Gruppe following on the 16th.
Between 1838 and 1959 hours six Do 217 bombers of III/KG 100 attacked the landing craft, with the pilots claiming rather optimistically to have sunk a 7,000-tonne freighter and damaged the American destroyer Le Long and three LSTs, 312, 384 and 282. The Allies claimed glider bombs had accounted for two landing craft, while mines and shellfire were responsible for damage to other vessels.
Operation Dragoon Page 14