First Blood in North Africa: Operation Torch and the U.S. Campaign in Africa in WWII

308 Pages·2017·73.9 MB·English

by  Jon Diamond

FIRST BLOOD IN NORTH AFRICA
FIRST BLOOD IN NORTH AFRICA
Operation Torch and the U.S. Campaign
in Africa in WWII
Jon Diamond
STACKPOLE
BOOKS
Guilford, Connecticut
Published by Stackpole Books
An imprint of Globe Pequot
Distributed by
NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK
Copyright © 2017 Jon Diamond
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical
means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher,
except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data Names: Diamond, Jon (Jonathan Russell), author.
Title: First blood in North Africa : Operation Torch and the U.S. campaign in Africa in WWII / Jon
Diamond.
Description: Lanham, Maryland : Stackpole Books, an imprint of Globe Pequot, trade division of the
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2017. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016033734 (print) | LCCN 2016034537 (ebook) | ISBN 9780811717779 (pbk.) | ISBN
780811765619 (e-book) | ISBN 9780811765619 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939-1945—
Campaigns—Africa, North. | Operation Torch, 1942. | Africa, North—History, Military.
Classification: LCC D766.82 .D53 2017 (print) | LCC D766.82 (ebook) | DDC 940.54/231—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016033734
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard
for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 Strategic Overview and the War in North Africa, 1940–1942
CHAPTER 2 Geography, Terrain, and the Invasion
CHAPTER 3 Commanders and Combatants
CHAPTER 4 The Amphibious Landings
CHAPTER 5 Tunisian Warfare and Weapons
CHAPTER 6 Epilogue
Acknowledgments
References
T
he interval from October 1942 through January 1943 has been referred to as
a “turning of the tide” in the epic struggle of World War II. During this
three-month time frame, five major land campaigns were conducted, leading to
staggering losses for the Axis partners of Germany and Italy as well as the
Japanese Empire. These included the protracted battles for Papua New Guinea;
Guadalcanal, in the southern Solomon Islands of the South Pacific Area; across
the Western Desert of the North African littoral, culminating in the First and
Second Battles of El Alamein; the defense of Stalingrad, resulting in the
surrender of large numbers of Axis coalition troops, comprising mostly the
Wehrmacht’s Sixth Army; and the invasion of Northwest Africa on November 8,
1942, Operation Torch.
First, in the Southwest Pacific Area, after the Japanese withdrew from their
overland assault on Port Moresby, New Guinea, Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur’s
American and Australian forces captured the Japanese garrisons at Buna and
Gona on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea, albeit at horrific cost to those
troops fighting in that hellacious locale. The victory over the tenacious Japanese
defenders at Buna and Gona, along with a previous repulsion of an enemy
amphibious assault at Milne Bay in late August and early September 1942,
effectively ensured that Port Moresby would not be attacked again from the
eastern half of New Guinea.
Second, in the South Pacific, the U.S. Marine Corps’ 1st Division
(Reinforced), along with U.S. Army contingents initially from the Americal
(23rd) Infantry Division, held off repeated Japanese land, sea, and air assaults to
continue to maintain control over Henderson Field on the northern plain of the
southern Solomon Island, Guadalcanal. Eventually more-substantial American
forces went on the offensive, causing the Japanese to completely withdraw from
Guadalcanal by the end of the first week of February 1943.
Third, at Stalingrad, Soviet forces made an epic defense within that city’s
streets against the Wehrmacht’s Gen. Friedrich von Paulus and his vaunted Sixth
Army, some of the finest troops in the German army. The planning for Operation
Torch would have been for naught had the Germans won their epic clash with
the Soviets. By October 1942 two Nazi armies had driven forward deep into the
Soviet interior’s Caucasus Mountains but had become bogged down only a few
miles from the oil fields that Hitler required to continue his war effort. Just to the
north of the Caucasus Mountains was the city of Stalingrad on the Volga River.
It was to become the farthest point that the German Sixth Army and 4th Panzer
Army would advance to. On October 2 von Paulus unleashed his last offensive
against the Russians in Stalingrad, namely, a 2,000-yard deep pocket, which
included the gutted remains of buildings and factories. The German gains were
measured in yards, and von Paulus admitted to his peers, “Things are going very
slowly, but every day we make a little progress. The whole thing is a question of
time and manpower.” The Wehrmacht could not do anything to delay winter’s
onset, nor could they tap into any ready reinforcements for von Paulus’s
dwindling Sixth Army ranks. The German High Command knew that if
Stalingrad was not captured within a month, the whole Nazi position in southern
Russia would be a precarious one since their flanks to the north and west were
held by Rumanian troops. As it happened, the flanks were overrun by a Russian
winter counteroffensive, and despite Gen. Erich von Manstein’s attempt to open
a corridor to von Paulus’s troops, the Sixth Army was encircled and forced to
surrender. The loss of the Sixth Army’s twenty divisions doomed the German
invasion of the Soviet Union.
Fourth, British prime minister Winston S. Churchill and his chief of the
Imperial General Staff (CIGS), Gen. Sir Alan Brooke, needed to engage the Axis
forces somewhere; however, both were dreadfully afraid of sending another
expeditionary force to the European continent or Scandinavia after the disasters
at Dunkirk and Norway in the spring of 1940. In the future both British leaders
would also learn that an attack on a fortified continental port was suicidal, as
evidenced at Dieppe during Operation Jubilee in August 1942, which inflicted
horrific casualties on the assaulting Canadian infantry and British armor. An
understanding of the campaign in Northwest Africa requires a description of the
combat events that occurred in the Western Desert of Egypt and Libya from
December 9, 1940, through November 8, 1942, the latter date corresponding to
the Operation Torch landings in French Morocco and Algeria.
The Italian Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, gave the British War Cabinet
its entrée into a land battle against the junior Axis partner across the North
African littoral and in rugged and remote East Africa, rather than on the
European continent. On June 11, 1940, as the French were about to capitulate,
Mussolini declared war on Britain and France. Soon thereafter, in the late
summer of 1940, Italy’s Tenth Army under Gen. Rodolfo Graziani launched its
laborious advance across the frontier from Cyrenaican Libya into Egypt. This
would later develop into a full-scale theater of war, which pitted British and
would later develop into a full-scale theater of war, which pitted British and
Commonwealth forces against the Axis fascist partners. Initially Gen. Archibald
Wavell, commander in chief (C-in-C), Middle East, decided that he had to attack
and rid this threat against his western flank by the Italian presence with a “short
and swift operation, lasting from four to five days at the most, and taking every
advantage of the element of surprise” in the Sofafi–Sidi Barrani–Buqbuq area.
The British C-in-C faced 215,000 Italians with only 36,000 of his own forces.
Wavell, after detailed clandestine planning, sent a relatively small combined
infantry, the 4th Indian Division, and armored contingent, the 7th Royal Tank
Regiment (RTR) with their heavy Infantry tanks nicknamed “Matildas.” This
combined British and Indian unit, initially called the Western Desert Force, was
under the command of Lt. Gen. Sir Richard O’Connor. Its orders were to
conduct a “limited raid”: from December 9–11, 1940, to evict those elements of
Mussolini’s Italian Tenth Army from their fortified Egyptian desert camps at
Nibeiwa as well as at Tummar East and West. In addition, O’Connor’s Western
Desert Force would then proceed to capture the port town of Sidi Barrani. In all,
a total of 20,000 Italians surrendered and 180 artillery guns and 60 tanks were
seized as thousands more streamed westward in a pell-mell fashion across the
coastal road toward Italy’s other port garrisons.
Having replaced the 4th Indian Division, now bound to fight the Italians in
Eritrea, Australian troops in the Australian Imperial Force’s (AIF) 6th Division,
after acclimatization and desert training in Palestine and Egypt, captured Bardia
on January 5, 1941. There the “haul” was 38,000 Italian prisoners along with
numerous coastal guns, field guns, antiaircraft (AA) pieces, and vehicles. The
British secretary for war, Anthony Eden, sardonically quipped, “never has so
much been surrendered by so many to so few.” On January 1 the Western Desert
Force was renamed XIII Corps and Wavell set his eyes on Benghazi; however,
Churchill was already siphoning off some of XIII Corps and Royal Air Force
(RAF) elements for an inopportune expedition against the Axis partners in
Greece.
Nonetheless, O’Connor had received permission to continue his “raid” as far
west as Benghazi once Tobruk was captured from the Italians. Tobruk was
assaulted by the Australian 6th Division and fell on January 22, 1941. More than
25,000 Italian prisoners were taken, along with hundreds of field guns. Again,
the Italians were in full retreat to the west of Tobruk. After capturing Derna on
January 30, 1941, O’Connor decided to maintain his pursuit of the Italians along
the coast with the intent of destroying the entire enemy Tenth Army. His plan
was to have the British 7th Armoured Division move swiftly to the southwest in
order to cut the road below Benghazi and trap the retreating Italians in the
Cyrenaican “bulge” with a double envelopment. One arm of his Corps reached
Cyrenaican “bulge” with a double envelopment. One arm of his Corps reached
Sidi Saleh, 10 miles south of Beda Fomm, on February 5, blocking the retreat of
the remnants of the entire Italian Tenth Army into Libya’s Tripolitania half.
Fighting raged for almost two days, until the Italians surrendered late on
February 7. An additional 20,000 Italians were captured, along with more than
100 tanks and field guns.
O’Connor signaled Wavell, “Fox killed in open,” and he believed that after
capturing Benghazi he would receive orders from him to press the attack to
Tripoli. However, Wavell had ended any hope of XIII Corps being sent to
Tripoli, since on February 10 the War Cabinet had ruled out continuing any
possibility of continuing the advance. Wavell was instructed to give first and
foremost priority to assisting Greece, which he had grave misgivings about since
a continued advance through Libya would result in the capture of the port of
Tripoli and finally evict the Italian Fascist forces from North Africa entirely. So,
after conquering the Cyrenaican half of Libya’s North African littoral and
freeing the Egyptian frontier from the Italian invader, XIII Corps went onto the
defensive at El Agheila at the base of the Gulf of Sirte, but only for a brief spell.
Tragically, the Greek venture became a disaster for Wavell, ultimately leading to
a forced Allied evacuation from the Peloponnese and the subsequent loss of
Crete to a German airborne invasion in the late spring of 1941.