Читать книгу Sicily '43 - James Holland - Страница 18

PLANNING FOR HUSKY WAS an extremely daunting challenge for the Allies, for a whole host of reasons. Winning in North Africa, where the Axis forces had had very difficult lines of communication, was one thing. Breaking into Festung Europa was quite another. Operation TORCH the previous November had been an astonishingly successful undertaking, but it had been an amphibious landing against poorly trained and equipped Vichy French troops – and in any case, political machinations beforehand had paved the way and ensured the ‘enemy’ forces opposing them came to heel in quick order and barely put up a fight.

Operation HUSKY, by contrast, was an altogether much bigger undertaking, and the Allies’ first attempt at re-entering Europe since the withdrawal of 1940. The last time the Allies had undertaken a major European amphibious assault had been at Gallipoli in the First World War, and no one needed reminding how badly that had gone. Alexander, who had studied the campaign at staff college and had walked the ground back in 1922, was all too aware that only by very close cooperation between the Allies, and between their collective air, land and naval forces, could the risks of such a massive undertaking be kept to reasonable proportions. What’s more, now that they had a great victory behind them, it was absolutely inconceivable that HUSKY should fail. Militating against failure trumped all other considerations. All.

The decision to invade Sicily had been made during the Casablanca Conference in January 1943. It had been back in December 1942, at a time when they had been expecting a swift end to the campaign in Tunisia, that Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed to meet with their chiefs of staff to plan future strategy; but then bad weather and unexpected heavy reinforcements by the Germans had put paid to any such rapid outcome, so that long weeks – months even – of fighting were still to come before the Allies would finally win the North African battle for good.

None the less, the meeting had been planned and organized for January, the Allies still needed to thrash out the next moves, and there were fundamental differences of opinion between the American and British chiefs of staff as to what those moves should be. The British approach was largely opportunistic. They would continue to build up strength, see how matters turned out, and respond to what opportunities presented themselves. The Americans, by contrast, preferred to look at Berlin and draw the straightest possible line to the closest launch point, which was Britain. The invasion of north-west Africa had been reluctantly accepted by the American military because of Roosevelt’s support for the plan, but now the US chiefs of staff, headed by General Marshall, had arrived in Casablanca wanting to pin down, first and foremost, how and when they were going to cross the English Channel and get into France. The British, for their part, better prepared for the conference and still, at this stage, the dominant partner when it came to land warfare, argued that by continuing operations in the Mediterranean they would be hastening Italy’s exit from the war and possibly even prompting Turkey to join the war on the Allied side.

In the sunshine of Casablanca, the Joint Chiefs, with Roosevelt and Churchill as the great overseers, thrashed out a way forward. In the end, the Americans agreed on a joint assault on Sicily in part because a great Allied force had already been amassed in North Africa and in part because of the shipping issue. As the American chiefs accepted, shipping was the biggest obstacle to their favoured strategy of a cross-Channel invasion of Nazi-occupied France. The drain on supplies caused by the fighting in North Africa had been startling. Both Britain’s and America’s war effort had suddenly and massively increased, which meant shipping was in considerably greater demand. After all, it wasn’t just the growing scale of operations in the Mediterranean, nor even the ongoing build-up in Britain, that had to be supported; there was also the war in the Pacific and in the Far East being prosecuted in parallel.

As things stood, the eastern Mediterranean remained closed, which meant shipping to the Far East was still heading all the way around South Africa, a long route which in turn caused a further drain on this precious resource. Capturing Sicily would open up the Mediterranean, enabling Allied shipping to use the Suez Canal and so save considerable time and effort. In other words, the British argued, by invading and taking Sicily, the Allies would be moving closer to making the cross-Channel invasion possible. In any case, argued General Sir Alan Brooke, the British CIGS, it was doubtful Germany could be sufficiently weakened to allow a successful cross-Channel invasion that year. The Dieppe Raid of August 1942, in which half the attacking force had been lost, had been a disaster and a salutary lesson. Yet the Soviet Union still needed diversionary support. Reluctantly, the American chiefs accepted that a cross-Channel operation in 1943 was not practicable; yet the political and military pressure to continue ground operations that year following the end of the North African campaign, not least to relieve pressure on the Soviet Union, was immense. Taking Sicily would help in forcing the Germans to spread their weakening resources still further, especially if, as hoped, the Italians were knocked out of the war. General Marshall and the US chiefs conceded there should be ongoing operations in the Mediterranean – but only on the non-negotiable condition that the British back a cross-Channel invasion of Nazi-occupied France in 1944.

And so it was settled, on 23 January 1943, with a directive issued to Eisenhower. Although Sardinia had been discussed, Sicily was the only realistic target. It was a far greater political and military prize, but also considerably more manageable now that Malta had been transformed from the most bombed place on Earth into what was in effect a stationary aircraft carrier just 60 miles south of Sicily. Everybody accepted there could be no invasion without fighter cover, which ruled out southern Greece and, realistically, Sardinia too.

Agreeing that Sicily should be the next focus was, however, the easy part. Eisenhower had announced his three service chiefs on 11 February – Alexander as land commander, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder as air commander and Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham as naval commander. In terms of experience and seniority it made perfect sense for them to all be British – but just three days later had come Rommel’s strike against the Americans at Sidi Bou Zid that opened the way for the defeat at Kasserine. Suddenly Alexander was being diverted to take charge of the crisis in Tunisia, and clearly this was his first priority, demanding that he devote much of his time, and his mental and physical energy, to touring the front and making the necessary dispositions.

None the less, by this stage Alexander had already concluded that the secret to the Allied way of war was to draw together more closely than ever before the three elements in which it was conducted: land, air and water. ‘Army, Air Force and Navy must become a brotherhood,’ he said.1 This mantra held especially true for HUSKY and was the starting point for planning for the invasion. From the outset, it was agreed that two invasion forces would be needed for HUSKY, one British and one American, and these, for the time being, were allotted code numbers. Force 545 was to be British, commanded by General Montgomery, and would sail for Sicily from Egypt. For planning purposes, Force 545 was based in Cairo, 1,400 miles away, even though Montgomery was still commanding Eighth Army in Tunisia. The American Force 343 was to be commanded by General Patton, known as a firebrand and an armour expert, and currently based in Algeria. Its headquarters was at Rabat in Morocco, over 1,000 miles from Tunis – but soon Patton, too, was pulled into the Tunisian battle to take command of II Corps after the sacking of the hopeless General Lloyd Fredendall. The air commanders also had their hands full with the Tunisian battle, leaving only the Allied navies with any kind of time to plan, although even they were caught up in anti-shipping operations against Axis convoys. Absentee landlordism was to be a major feature of the planning of HUSKY, but part of the reason for agreeing to Sicily was that most of the forces – including their commanders – were already in the Mediterranean theatre. Bringing in a new and untested team would rather defeat the point of the object. Even so, and to make matters more complicated, there was a planning team in London and also ostensibly another under Alexander in Bouzarea, near Algiers: Force 141, so named for security reasons but also after the main room used in the St George Hotel in which the team were housed.

There were at least certain prerequisites on which everyone was agreed. Air superiority was essential, so too was naval superiority, and so too was a sufficient speed with which ground forces could be landed and reinforced compared with the likely rate of Axis reinforcement. Naval superiority was more or less a given, since the Italian fleet had not been to sea since the middle of the previous year, but air superiority was not yet assured and there was a huge question mark over how effectively the Allies could build up their strength once ashore.

The geography of Sicily hardly helped. Messina was the ultimate goal, as the city closest to the toe of the Italian mainland and the access point through which enemy supplies would principally flow. It was also comfortably the largest port on the island, with a daily handling capacity of some 4,500 tons. However, it was in the north-eastern corner of the island, which was dominated by the mighty volcanic mass of Mount Etna. ‘It was strongly defended,’ noted Alexander, ‘difficult of access and well out of range of air cover.’2 As an invasion point, it was a non-starter. Away to the west along the northern coast was the second largest port, Palermo, with a daily capacity of 2,500 tons; but near to Palermo was the Trapani–Castelvetrano complex of airfields. Along the central eastern coast, some 150 miles from Trapani, was Catania, the third largest port, and south of that, Augusta and Syracuse. Catania had an airfield, and a little further inland was the Gerbini airfield complex, while on the southern coast there were further airfields at Gela and Comiso. When planning began, there were nineteen airfields on Sicily – no small number – but by the end of June there were thirty.

Planners reckoned they needed to be unloading some 3,000 tons of supplies a day initially, rising rapidly to 6,000 as the invasion strength grew. Operation TORCH, although a major amphibious landing, wasn’t a huge amount of help in terms of lesson learning because the Vichy French had had no air forces, the enemy strength had been known and the ports had been swiftly captured. For HUSKY, hastily developed landing craft could deliver a certain amount of supplies directly on to beaches, but this was considered a temporary measure at best. The swift capture of ports was recognized to be essential.

Yet in this respect the island was poorly served, despite its long history as a maritime base. Shipping had grown massively in recent decades and so had armies, yet Sicily, still centuries behind the times in many ways, had not caught up. Without Messina, it was estimated the east coast ports could manage around 3,400 tons a day, while western harbours – Palermo plus Trapani and a couple of other smaller ones – could collectively cope with around 4,700 tons. The tiny southern coast ports together could handle possibly as much as 1,400 tons each day. And that was assuming the ports had not been wrecked first and would be open for business almost immediately.

A horrible planning conundrum was very quickly rearing its ugly head. Key to success was air power, and yet a mass of enemy airfields were stretched along both sides of this awkward triangular and really quite large Mediterranean island. Fighter aircraft from Malta could cover the eastern side of Sicily, but not the west. From Cap Bon in Tunisia, Palermo was at the outer reach of effective fighter cover. The much-needed ports were in both the west and the east, which implied the need for landings at the geographical and logistical extremes in both directions. That was all very well, but risked the two invasion forces being effectively independent of one another and therefore not mutually supporting, and so being exposed to defeat in isolation. Since planning was taking place from February – and starting at the very moment of a reversal in fortunes in Tunisia – it was impossible to know what enemy strength they might face when they finally landed in Sicily. It was anyone’s guess in February 1943, and even more so by the beginning of May when a plan was finally agreed. It made the entire operation the most terrible risk.

Historians have not been kind to the Allied planners for HUSKY. Everyone, it seems, has had it in the neck from those sitting in the comfort of their armchairs many decades after the events took place. Eisenhower has been accused of being too weak, Alexander for not gripping the process, everyone else for being at one another’s throats, and Montgomery, especially, for being brash, arrogant and selfish. Really, it’s been extraordinary how deep the criticism has run; yet because most of the key decision-makers already had their hands full fighting a bitter battle in Tunisia, it’s hard to think of a more challenging set of circumstances in which to prepare such an enormous undertaking.

A different point of view on the planning of HUSKY is that it was always going to be a mind-bogglingly difficult operation to prepare, and that an evolving plan was entirely normal and understandable for such an enterprise in such challenging circumstances. Furthermore, what is remarkable about the HUSKY planning is not the levels of discord involved, but rather, how well the new coalition partners were operating and rubbing along together.

It is all too easy to be seduced by a choice one-liner in a diary taken in isolation. The journals and letters of these senior commanders need to be read and understood within the context in which they were written: by men with overwhelming amounts of responsibility and as a means of letting off steam as much as to set down a record for posterity. Most people, at some point in their lives, have argued vociferously for something they care about, whether with colleagues, friends or family. So it was with the Allied commanders, but for them the consequences of making the wrong decision were potentially catastrophic – including the loss of many young men’s lives – so of course, at times, matters grew heated. It was to be expected. But this really does not mean the coalition was crumbling at the seams. Far from it; that the senior commanders could debate such matters so openly was both healthy and a demonstration of how much they cared about the mission they had been given.

In this new partnership, Eisenhower was the chief executive answerable to a board of Joint Chiefs, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Alexander, Tedder and Cunningham were the CEOs of subsidiary arms. The difference was that their results would be judged not in terms of share price, but in success in battle and numbers of casualties.

Alexander wrote to General Brooke on 5 April from his tactical headquarters near the Tunisian Front. Despite having to give much of his attention to current operations, he had, he told the CIGS, been giving time to the study of HUSKY. ‘I think we are on a good wicket,’ he wrote, ‘provided certain obvious conditions are fulfilled – such as air and naval superiority and not too many good German formations in the way.3 The latter we cannot prevent, but the former we can influence and I want to put it quite plainly. The margin between success and failure is small. If the Navy and the air forces, especially the latter, will go all out 100% in their backing the Army, we should pull off a great victory.’ He was keen to use the airborne forces being assembled in helping to secure the beachheads. Alex was also aware of the shortfall in shipping caused by the continued and growing battle in Tunisia. ‘LSTs are short – other shipping is short,’ he acknowledged. ‘But it must be found, even if people at home go short. Half measures or half-hearted measures will spell defeat for certain – we must go all out 100% for a win. RN, RAF and Army.’

What he meant was, HUSKY was not the operation on which to take any avoidable risks. Stalingrad, Tunisgrad – as it was now being called – the start of the all-out strategic air offensive against Germany by Bomber Command, and the battle against the U-boats in the Atlantic which was about to reach a peak in favour of the Allies: all pointed to a dramatic reversal of fortunes for the Axis. It was on its knees and there was, realistically, no way back now for Nazi Germany. What was uncertain was how much longer the war would continue and how many more lives would be lost in the process. For the Allies to attack Sicily and be thrown back into the sea would not mean losing the war but it would be a terrible setback. It would also unquestionably push back OVERLORD, the cross-Channel invasion that had been agreed for 1944. Far better to cover all bases, cut out as much risk as possible and make sure HUSKY was a success. Alexander’s assessment was spot-on.

The date for HUSKY had been set for early July when the moon was favourable, and although both Churchill and Marshall repeatedly urged Eisenhower and Alexander to bring it forward a month if at all possible, as time marched on, and the Tunisian campaign continued, it became increasingly clear they would have to stick with the July date. This was because even once victory had been won in North Africa on 13 May, time was needed to properly train the assault battalions and also the airborne forces who were seen as a key component of the invasion. So Eisenhower stuck to his guns. The day of invasion, D-Day – the day – would be Saturday, 10 July.

The British chiefs of staff in London had already developed a speculative plan, which they passed on to Alexander’s Force 141 in Bouzarea. With Alex off at the Tunisian front, it was left to Major-General Charles Gairdner, his new chief of staff, to oversee the multinational planning team and try to make some sense of the complex issues that faced them. One particularly ominous line in the London plan warned: ‘We are doubtful of the chances of success against a garrison which includes German formations.’4 Alexander felt this was massively overstating the threat but made clear to Gairdner, in the brief moment he was able to give it his attention, that the first plan was a starting point only. None the less, at this early stage of the planning, it seemed a good idea to try and find a way to make landings in both the east and the west, possibly staggered, so as to both knock out key concentrations of airfields and also swiftly capture Palermo as well as Catania, Augusta and Syracuse, and so solve the issue of how to build up strength rapidly.

‘The month of February and the early days of March were the most critical periods in Tunisia,’ noted Alexander, ‘and it was impossible for me to give the plans for Sicily any detailed attention.’5 That was more than understandable, albeit far from ideal; but even so, he was able to make some suggestions and modifications to the plan. His biggest concern with the early drafts was the distance between the divisions and brigades that were landing – they were clearly too far apart, not mutually supporting and in danger of being picked off in isolation. Nor were the burgeoning airborne forces of paratroopers and glider troops being concentrated enough. In fact, the early drafts lacked any kind of concentration of force, a military tenet to which Alexander was rightly wedded.

Alex even considered sending both task forces to the south-east of Sicily, but this plan hit a wall of opposition elsewhere because it was still felt the quick capture of Palermo was essential. At this time it was estimated – or guessed – that there would be at least eight enemy divisions in Sicily. Alex had ten divisions earmarked for the invasion in total.

In between periods of commanding at the front, Alex and the other key commanders met for planning conferences whenever they could, although the constraints on their time and the distances they had to travel to be in the same place meant that Eisenhower, Alexander, Tedder and Cunningham were very rarely all together. It really was far from ideal. Geography dictated where the British and American landings would be focused. Because most of the British forces would be sailing from Egypt and the Middle East, they would be landing in the eastern part of Sicily. Similarly, because the Americans would be setting off from Tunisia, logic suggested they should be in the west. Furthermore, because the eastern parts of the island were closest to Messina, it seemed likely this side would be the more heavily defended. Moreover, the Gerbini airfield complex, close to Catania, clearly held the key to the defence of the island, and both the port and the surrounding airfields had to be the overriding number one initial target priority. On this, Eisenhower and Alexander were united. Montgomery demanded an extra division for his landings around Avola, just to the south of Syracuse, and one was eventually found. As Easter approached, it seemed that a plan of sorts was emerging upon which everyone was agreed.

Then, on 24 April, a brusque and damning signal arrived from Monty, in which he called the proposed HUSKY plan a ‘dog’s breakfast’ that had no chance of success.6 ‘Unless someone will face up to this problem,’ he told General Brooke in London, ‘there will be a first-class disaster.’ Needless to say, this caused consternation elsewhere. Both Tedder and Cunningham were seething at Montgomery’s proposed front-loading of the Eastern Task Force to focus on the Avola area because it meant moving the planned British force that had been due to land around Gela and Licata on the central southern coast. Their task had been to overrun the airfields at Comiso and especially Gela–Ponte Olivo, which had recently grown in size and sophistication. Tedder felt they posed far too great a risk to be left in enemy hands, and so too did Cunningham. ‘I’m afraid Montgomery is a bit of a nuisance,’ wrote Cunningham to Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, the First Sea Lord.7 ‘He seems to think that all he has to do is to say what is to be done and everyone will dance to the tune of his piping. Alexander appears quite unable to keep him in order.’

The real gripe for Tedder and Cunningham, though, was less that Montgomery was unhappy with the plan as it existed, more the way in which he demanded changes. It was, after all, only right that individual commanders should air concerns if they had them. Perhaps Alexander could have given Montgomery a lesson in manners, but Monty had always been forthright and outspoken; and he had Brooke’s unwavering support. In any case, he was the primary assault commander and it was essential he was carrying out a plan that had his backing. Montgomery had repeatedly proved himself a highly competent operational commander and was, by some margin, the most famous and lauded British general of the war to date. He instinctively understood what could and could not be achieved by largely conscript armies whose personnel would no longer be shot at dawn should they decide they didn’t want to go into battle after all. His big failing was his total inability to show any kind of sensitivity to others. He cared not a jot about rubbing people up the wrong way, and seemed to have no awareness of his appalling rudeness.

Much has been made over the years of tensions between the British and the Americans, but the spats that did occur rarely ran on national lines; they were nearly always over matters of differing tactical approaches or doctrine, or basic clashes of personality that had nothing to do with nationality. Almost all the senior commanders loathed Montgomery; that didn’t make him a bad commander, but it did complicate matters, especially when there was quite enough pressure and tension to deal with as it was. Even in a time of coalition warfare and diplomatic singing from the same hymn sheet, Monty steadfastly proved incapable of abiding by the rules.

His scathing critique of the current favoured plan was, on the face of it, all the more remarkable because he had earlier appeared reasonably happy. What had changed his view had been the fighting in Tunisia. After the Battle of Wadi Akarit at the beginning of April, Montgomery’s Eighth Army had swept up the coastal plain confident of bursting through the next obvious defensive position around Enfidaville, which was held by what had once been Rommel’s Panzerarmee Afrika but was now a mostly Italian force commanded by the Italian Generale Messe. Instead of a swift victory, Eighth Army had hit a brick wall. Takrouna, a particularly well-defended strongpoint, proved an especially stubborn and hard-fought battle. It made Montgomery realize, with stark clarity, that on the home soil of Sicily the Italians might well not prove the push-over being predicted. ‘Planning so far’, Monty wrote to Alex, ‘has been based on the assumption that the opposition will be slight and that Sicily will be captured relatively easily.8 Never was there a greater error. The Germans and also the Italians are fighting desperately now in Tunisia and will do so in Sicily.’ Montgomery might have been overstating matters, but HUSKY was not the time to throw caution to the wind and gamble. It went back to the most vital of all considerations: HUSKY could not be allowed to fail.

Expressions of caution over the likely strength of enemy defence had prompted caustic signals from Churchill, who seemed to be forgetting Gallipoli back in 1915, when the Allies had landed against what had been assumed to be comparatively weak Turkish troops. In any case, Monty’s bombshell chimed with nagging doubts as to the current plan shared by both Eisenhower and Alexander. By the end of April, however, it was clear the Tunisian campaign was nearly over and so there was now time to give HUSKY more detailed consideration. The picture was beginning to clarify. ‘It must be remembered when considering the frame of mind in which we set out on this expedition,’ noted Alex, ‘that this was the first large-scale amphibious operation in the war against a defended coastline and opponents equipped with modern weapons … No care was too great to ensure our first landing in Europe should be successful beyond doubt.’9

While Alexander and Eisenhower now accepted Montgomery’s demand for greater strength around Avola, that did not mean they had completely accepted his plans; after all, there was the question of what to do about the airfield complexes at Gela–Ponte Olivo and Comiso. Failing to neutralize thirteen enemy airfields that could threaten shipping and landings was every bit as unacceptable as attacking under strength at Avola.

Montgomery’s planning team went back to the drawing board and on 1 May he flew in person to Algiers, where he met with Major-General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s chief of staff, and suggested abandoning the western assault altogether and instead directing Patton’s Western Task Force to the southern coast at Gela and Licata. Bedell Smith was sold on this idea but initially Eisenhower refused to discuss it further without Alexander being present. Bad weather prevented Alex from reaching Algiers the following day, although a conference was held then after all. By the time Alexander finally reached Allied Forces HQ on 3 May, Ike had come round to Montgomery’s proposals.

By now Alexander had needed little persuading. He’d already proposed such a plan early on, and only the accepted need for Palermo’s port had persuaded him otherwise. Both Tedder and Cunningham seemed content, although Tedder decidedly grudgingly so; he had long since grown weary of Montgomery – and could hardly be blamed for that. Only two concerns troubled both Ike and Alex. One was unloading directly on to the very extensive beaches around Gela; but this, it seemed, was being solved in part by the arrival of DUKWs. Pronounced ‘ducks’, these were ingenious amphibious vehicles developed by the Americans that could swim from larger vessels and then drive straight on to the beach. Large orders had been placed on 22 March with an understanding they would be available for HUSKY.

The second concern was the perception that the Western Task Force, or more simply US Seventh Army as it was about to be renamed, should somehow be playing second fiddle. Its commander, General Patton, was as forthright as Montgomery and not known to mince his words or hide his displeasure if slighted. But when this new and final plan was presented to him, Patton was as good as gold. ‘It is an impressive example of the spirit of complete loyalty and inter-Allied co-operation’, wrote Alexander, ‘which inspired all operations with which I was associated in the Mediterranean theatre.’10