Читать книгу Mr. Roosevelt's Navy - Patrick Abazzia - Страница 22

9. A Passage to India

THE FUEHRER’S SPASM OF futile diplomacy brought consternation to his foes, who supposed that he had offered the French a lenient peace in exchange for the French Fleet. It was feared that the French warships at Martinique and Guadeloupe might try to escape to Dakar. An increase in the number of submarine “sightings” in the Caribbean lent credence to such suspicions. Rumors thrived in the climate of uncertainty, and there was public speculation that Luftwaffe pilots were being smuggled into Martinique from Colombia. Although intelligence sources did not report any unusual activity on the French islands, it was felt in Washington that the time had come to reach a specific understanding with French Admiral Georges Robert in regard to his warships.¹

During the summer and fall, the Navy and Marines readied plans for the capture of the islands, code-named India.

At Fort de France and in its bay, the French had fourteen heavy guns, four lighter cannons, and antiaircraft weapons; elsewhere, they had four 164-mm. guns and eight 80-mm. and 95-mm. mobile pieces. The carrier Béarn and light cruiser Emile Bertin added firepower to the defenses; the old training cruiser Jeanne d’Arc was at Guadeloupe. There were also several armed merchant ships off the islands.

The French air defenses were weak. The Béarn still possessed 102 planes, but they were not operational on account of poor maintenance facilities, lack of spare parts, aviation gasoline, and trained pilots, and general deterioration of equipment in the hot, humid climate. In effect, six twin-engine flying boats and four single-engine float planes were available at Martinique, with a dozen other obsolete types at Guadeloupe.

The French had 2,000 native troops, led by 150 white officers and NCOs, 2,000 demobilized natives with military experience in North Africa, and 3,000 sailors from the warships in port. The defenders were poorly equipped except for three hundred .30-caliber machine guns. Most of the population was not loyal to Vichy, adding a morale problem to the mediocrity of the colonial troops.

The Americans would be overwhelmingly strong in the air and at sea, but weak on the ground. Much of the strength of the Army and Marines was invested in expanded training programs; consequently, the Marines could furnish but one understrength rifle regiment and the Army one regimental combat team. Two artillery batteries from the 11th Marines and an engineer company were added to the riflemen of the 5th Marines to form a small assault brigade of about 2,900 men. The Marines were short of machine guns and mortars, were relatively inexperienced in seaborne operations, and many of the newer infantrymen were in need of physical hardening. Nevertheless, they were tough, disciplined men and seemed better prepared for the shock of combat than the 5,100 soldiers of Task Force “A,” First Infantry Division, who were not slated to land until several days after the assault because of the shortage of shipping.

Admiral Ellis, who was to command the naval attack force, was worried about the lack of trained men in his ships and his weak antiaircraft defenses. Nevertheless, the Atlantic Squadron, with some hasty improvisation, managed to amass an effective striking force. Air support would be provided by the Ranger and the new Wasp, with about 150 planes, and the carriers would be screened by four new destroyers, the Mayrant, Trippe, Rhind, and Sims. The Marines and their light equipment would be carried in the transports Henderson, Barnett, and McCawley; the latter two ships had been recently purchased, and their conversion to naval use had been accomplished in twenty-five days; both were below service standards in material readiness and overall efficiency, but cranky auxiliaries were better than none at all. The gunfire-support and counterbattery group consisted of the battleship Texas, the heavy cruisers Vincennes and Chester, the light cruisers Omaha and Memphis, and the nine four-stackers of Destroyer Squadron 30—the Ellis, Cole, Dallas, Bernadou, DuPont, Lea, Greer, Tarbell, and Upshur. The destroyer-transport Manley carried a reinforced company of Marines, which was to serve as a mobile landing force employed as needed. Five old destroyers—the MacLeish, Bainbridge, Sturtevant, Overton, and Reuben James—and the minecraft Seminole were to act as a control and salvage group. Finally, the entire force was to be screened by five new destroyers, the Moffett, Hughes, Buck, Russell, and O’Brien, and four old ones, the four-stackers McCormick, Broome, Simpson, and Truxtun. The aircraft tender Goldsborough was stationed at Gros Islet Bay with a small brood of PBYs, which would fly reconnaissance and tracking missions; the small tender Gannet and her PBYs operated off Port of Spain, and other patrol planes were based at San Juan and Guantanamo Bay.

The plans called for Admiral Greenslade to return to Martinique in November and seek to persuade Admiral Robert that there was nothing dishonorable about compromising in the face of superior force. Since the aim was to avoid bloodshed if possible, a surprise assault was ruled out. The task force would display itself openly to lend point to Greenslade’s talks; loss of surprise would mean added causal-ties in event of a fight, but as Admiral Ellis said, “compelling moral grounds” as well as political necessity took precedence over purely military factors.

If all efforts to reach agreement failed, the campaign would begin in mid-November. Commencing five days before L-Day, daily reconnaissance and photographic missions would be flown over the islands. Two days later, the carrier air strikes would begin, and for three days, planes from the Ranger and Wasp would strike at the French planes, ships, coastal batteries, and AA positions; on L-minus-1, the planes would attack the French positions in the landing area. On the same day, the gunfire support force led by the Texas would bombard shore positions and silence the remaining French batteries. On L-Day, the planes would again bomb and strafe the Fort de France infantry and gun positions north of the beaches; thirty minutes before H-Hour, the light cruisers would fire 800 rounds of 6-inch and the support destroyers 1,414 rounds of 4-inch shells at the beach defenses. Then the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the Fifth Marines would land abreast on Beaches N1 and N2 in the Basse Terre area, near Fort de France. The reserve consisted of 1st Battalion, Fifth, embarked in the Henderson, less the reinforced company in the Manley.

Supported by air cover as practicable, the Marines would drive north to secure the Fort de France area; when the major objectives had been taken, the Army would make an administrative landing, cope with such resistance as remained, and supply an occupation force. Then, if necessary, Guadelope could be blockaded or attacked.²

Backed by the Ranger, Admiral Greenslade was able to persuade Admiral Robert to grant the United States ninety-six hours’ notice of ship movements, accept American naval and air patrols within French territorial jurisdiction, and permit a naval observer at Fort de France. Robert rejected American suggestions that he transfer the French sailors off the islands, incapacitate his ships by removing vital parts, and permit regular inspection of the harbor at Fort de France by U.S. warships. Thus, the basic problems posed by the presence of the French warships in the Caribbean were not permanently solved but temporarily postponed. The Americans agreed to see that the islands were supplied with food, paid for out of blocked Vichy funds in the United States.³

Also that fall, plans were hastily improvised for the “protective occupation” of the islands of San Miguel, Terceira, and Fayal in the Azores in the event a German strike at the Portuguese possessions appeared imminent. Plans called for the still-building, understrength First Marine Division to make the assault landing, escorted and protected by a fast, compact naval task force built around the Ranger, four modern cruisers, and a squadron of new destroyers. There was little Portuguese military strength on the islands, the troops “badly armed, trained, and equipped”; it was expected that they would “offer little resistance.” No assault force was assembled to strike at the Azores because shipping and equipment for such a major operation were in short supply and, anyway, the Fuehrer had abandoned Operation Felix; for as long as Gibraltar and Dakar remained out of German hands, distance (the German bases nearest the Azores were 1,200 miles away, in France) protected the weakly held central and southern Atlantic island approaches to the United States.⁴

In the fall and winter, the atmosphere of crisis dissolved. Most of the ships of the Atlantic Squadron returned to routine Neutrality Patrol duties and elements of the Fifth Marines returned from readiness at Guantanamo Bay to help shape development of the First Division. But some American ships and planes continued to patrol off the French islands.

Destroyers patrolled close off Martinique, at the three-mile limit, steaming monotonously through the blue-green sea, crews lulled by the warm golden sun and pale tropical sky. Working out of San Juan and “Gitmo” were four of the old, poorly designed Omaha-class light cruisers, patrolling steadily, officers and men longing for more challenging duty.⁵

But some of the fliers had their hands full. As the Caribbean base facilities were still under construction that fall and winter, tender-based PBYs operated off Bermuda, St. Lucia, and Trinidad, watching the French. High seas and gales hampered the water-based flight operations, and it was often hard to fuel and arm the planes from bowser boats; normally, it took about five hours’ hard work to refuel and, perhaps, three more to arm six PBYs. It was difficult to do the necessary work on the planes because beaching and maintenance facilities were lacking. Nevertheless, the operations of the tender-based flying boats compared favorably with the record made by patrol planes using the prepared bases at San Juan and Guantanamo. The PBYs continued to overfly the French islands, sometimes landing in the bay off Fort de France to pick up reports from the naval observer. In late March, a low-flying PBY passed directly over the Béarn, and the French threatened to open fire if a similar incident occurred.⁶ But, for the time being, the Greenslade-Robert modus vivendi worked, for neither side wanted to fight the other, save as a matter of compelling necessity.

Meanwhile, the American Navy was taking the lead in forcing the reluctant President and the preoccupied Army to reach definite conclusions concerning America’s strategy in the impending war, thus advancing American strategic planning well beyond the summer’s logjam of hemispheric defense, containment of Japan, and material aid to Britain. By the fall of 1940, Admiral Stark and his naval planners were prepared to revolutionize the fundamental assumptions of prewar American strategy and set the foundation of the basic American strategy of World War II.