OTHER D-DAY: THE INVASION OF SOUTHERN FRANCE, THE

Sea Classics, Sep 2004 by Burton, Earl

August marks the 60th Anniversary of the second largest amphibious landings on the European mainland as the Allies stormed ashore in southern France

Mussolini's Mare Nostrum, the Mediterranean, had become an Allied pond. Far to the north, Patton's Third Army had broken out of Normandy and was sweeping through France, heading, under a cloak of censorship, for Paris in a great arc. The German Seventh Army, ground powder-fine, was trickling as best it could through the Falaise Gap. The war in the west was matched by the war in the east as the Russian Army rolled implacably forward all along its widespread front. The time was ripe for the next great blow. The invasion of Southern France got under way.

Newspaper correspondents have called the southern France assault "the worst-kept secret of the war." They bolster the claim with incidents: Italian civilians who blurted out the exact date and place of the invasion days ahead of time, GIs who did the same thing, one Italian paper which ran a page one story on the coming attack, French civilians in far-off Brittany who seemed strikingly well informed of the Allied plans. Indeed, it seemed inconceivable that the enemy himself did not know just when and where it had been planned to strike. If he did, however, he gave little indication of acting on the knowledge.

The secret was an almost impossible one to keep, in any case. Southern France was the obvious place to attack if the Allies were to support and build up their drive in the north - and it was clear that the Battle of France had been chosen by the Germans as the Battle of Europe against the Western powers. Furthermore, the assault had to come somewhere within swift striking distance of the great ports of Toulon and Marseilles and, even more important, somewhere near the great Rhône Valley route through which to effect a junction with the northern Army groups nearing Germany. Only the time of the attack could be a matter of doubt. There again, Allied intentions were, of necessity, pretty clear: While the Germans held the port of Leghorn (Livorno) and clung to their Pisa-Rimini line, there could be no release of the battle-wise, invasion-learned divisions like the American 45th, 36th and 3rd. Furthermore, until it was certain that all was going well in northern France, there could be no relaxation of the weight of sea power brought to bear in that area; heavy ships like the Texas and Nevada could not be spared.

Then, too, the Nazi observers, comfortable in their posts on the high cliffs of neutral Spain and Spanish Morocco bordering the Strait of Gibraltar, had had ample opportunity to learn what an invasion in the making looked like. Receiving their reports, the German High Command could get a fair idea that the hour for another big attack was rapidly approaching.

Operations against Genoa and intensified air attacks, plus a concentration of war shipping in the Gulf of Tarante and across the Mediterranean at Alexandria, may have helped to keep the enemy off balance somewhat. He had no doubt, however, that big things were in store for him. Oran, Algiers, Bizerte, Tunis and Alexandria on the North African shore bulged with shipping, while closer to the point of attack, Palermo, Naples and the little ports of Corsica and Sardinia, were packed with landing craft, LSTs, LCTs and LCIs all awaiting Vice-Admiral Henry K. Hewitt's signal.

The assault was to be a four-pronged drive, a great claw of men and steel to seize the vital French-Mediterranean portal. Three of the talons were to strike from the sea against the leverage exerted by a vast force of British and American paratroopers and glider-borne infantry put down from ten to 15 miles inland.

Clawing in from the sea, amphibious forces of the 3rd Division under Maj. Gen. J. W. O'Daniel were to attack just east of the Rade de Hyéres with the task force of R/Adm. Bertram J. Rodgers, USN. This was the left flank of the assault. In the center, a task force under R/Adm. Frank J. Lowry, USN, was to put ashore units of Maj. Gen. W. W. Eagles's 45th, or "Thunderbird," Division near Cape Nègre on Bougnon Bay. The right, or east, flank was to be composed of the 36th Division under Maj. Gen. J. E. Dahlquist, in the task force placed under the command, a fortnight earlier, of Rear Adm. Spencer S. Lewis, USN.

Operational command - Navy, Army and Air - Vice-Adm. Hewitt, Maj. Gen. Alexander M. Patch and Brigadier Gen. Gordon P. Saville - had had the advantage of working out their plans under a single roof, and this close meshing of all the gears in the intricate amphibious machine paid off handsomely when the time came to put it to work.

As in the invasion of Normandy, the first great problem was one of timing; fire-support ships from far-off Oran and Alexandria had to arrive off the beaches through the same swept channels at the same time as lumbering LCTs from Corsica. Convoys of LSTs threading their way from Naples through the narrow Strait of Bonifacio had to join smoothly with speedier LCIs coming out of Ajaccio. And inevitably the whole armada, some 800 ships of all types, had to be compressed into narrower waters as it neared the assault beaches.