Read Online Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings by Craig L. Symonds - Free Book Online
Authors: Craig L. Symonds
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their long bow ramps took thirteen minutes to deploy, which was not ideal when under fire. †
In addition to the transports and the landing ships, each of the invasion forces also required a warship escort, not only to ensure safe arrival at the beach but also to provide naval gunfire support against targets ashore. By agreement, the U.S. Navy would escort the American invasion force across the Atlantic from Norfolk to Morocco, and the Royal Navy would do the same for the invasion groups from Scotland to Algiers and Oran. TheAmerican warship contingent included the brand-new battleship USS
Massachusetts
(BB-59) plus the much older
New York
(BB-34) and
Texas
(BB-35) as well as seven cruisers and no fewer than thirty-eight destroyers. More destroyers would have been preferable, but in the late summer of 1942, destroyers were in demand everywhere: the Battle of the Atlantic against German U-boats was at full tide, and that very week in the Pacific, U.S. Navy destroyers engaged in a series of fierce surface engagements in the Solomon Islands. In this, as in all things, the Allies would make do with what there was. The British warships committed to Torch, dubbed “Force H” and “Force X,” included the
Duke of York
(the battleship that had carried Churchill to the Arcadia conference), the
Nelson
, two battlecruisers (ships with armament similar to a battleship but more lightly armored), three cruisers, and seventeen destroyers, one of them Dutch. To assemble this force, the Royal Navy had to draw from the Home Fleet, reduce the Atlantic escorts, and temporarily suspend the convoys to Russia. 15
Eisenhower’s job was to bring all the elements together—the troopships, the transports, the aircraft carriers, the landing craft, and the warships, both British and American, plus the tanks, trucks, and jeeps, and the thousands of tons of supplies, plus more than a hundred thousand men—in a complex maritime quadrille. Keeping track of all the various pieces of this giant puzzle was all but overwhelming. Eisenhower bemoaned the fact that “there is no way in many instances of knowing exactly what we have here. Many supplies are still unclassified and are not yet unloaded at depots. Time for unloading, sorting, cataloging, and for subsequent boxing, crating, marking, and loading simply does not exist.” Nevertheless, the unforgiving timetable dictated that the operation begin before the winter storms arrived, and so work continued around the clock. 16
In early November, Eisenhower boarded a B-17 “Flying Fortress” and flew from England to Gibraltar where he set up headquarters in a small, dank chamber carved out of the rock itself. * He had set all the pieces in motion; now it was a matter of what he described as an “interminable, almostunendurable wait” to see whether they fit together. The wait was especially nerve-racking because the ships en route to the invasion beaches all operated under radio silence. He may have been in command, but he had no idea what was happening, and he felt utterly helpless. “We cannot find out anything!” he scrawled in his diary in frustration. 17
ON OCTOBER 23, 1942, A LONG COLUMN of ships that included twenty-eight transports packed with 33,843 American soldiers began filing slowly out of Hampton Roads, Virginia, and into Chesapeake Bay to begin a four-thousand-mile journey to the coast of Africa. That same day in Egypt, forces of the British Eighth Army attacked the German Afrika Corps at El Alamein. The British pounded the outnumbered Germans for ten days, eventually winning a signal victory—indeed, the first major British victory of the war against a German army. It was a promising omen.
While the British assailed the Germans at El Alamein, the American convoy steamed eastward across the Atlantic. Destroyers scouted ahead, with watch standers scouring the sea for the telltale “feather” of an enemy periscope. Navy patrol planes circled overhead; two silver blimps drifted
In addition to the transports and the landing ships, each of the invasion forces also required a warship escort, not only to ensure safe arrival at the beach but also to provide naval gunfire support against targets ashore. By agreement, the U.S. Navy would escort the American invasion force across the Atlantic from Norfolk to Morocco, and the Royal Navy would do the same for the invasion groups from Scotland to Algiers and Oran. TheAmerican warship contingent included the brand-new battleship USS
Massachusetts
(BB-59) plus the much older
New York
(BB-34) and
Texas
(BB-35) as well as seven cruisers and no fewer than thirty-eight destroyers. More destroyers would have been preferable, but in the late summer of 1942, destroyers were in demand everywhere: the Battle of the Atlantic against German U-boats was at full tide, and that very week in the Pacific, U.S. Navy destroyers engaged in a series of fierce surface engagements in the Solomon Islands. In this, as in all things, the Allies would make do with what there was. The British warships committed to Torch, dubbed “Force H” and “Force X,” included the
Duke of York
(the battleship that had carried Churchill to the Arcadia conference), the
Nelson
, two battlecruisers (ships with armament similar to a battleship but more lightly armored), three cruisers, and seventeen destroyers, one of them Dutch. To assemble this force, the Royal Navy had to draw from the Home Fleet, reduce the Atlantic escorts, and temporarily suspend the convoys to Russia. 15
Eisenhower’s job was to bring all the elements together—the troopships, the transports, the aircraft carriers, the landing craft, and the warships, both British and American, plus the tanks, trucks, and jeeps, and the thousands of tons of supplies, plus more than a hundred thousand men—in a complex maritime quadrille. Keeping track of all the various pieces of this giant puzzle was all but overwhelming. Eisenhower bemoaned the fact that “there is no way in many instances of knowing exactly what we have here. Many supplies are still unclassified and are not yet unloaded at depots. Time for unloading, sorting, cataloging, and for subsequent boxing, crating, marking, and loading simply does not exist.” Nevertheless, the unforgiving timetable dictated that the operation begin before the winter storms arrived, and so work continued around the clock. 16
In early November, Eisenhower boarded a B-17 “Flying Fortress” and flew from England to Gibraltar where he set up headquarters in a small, dank chamber carved out of the rock itself. * He had set all the pieces in motion; now it was a matter of what he described as an “interminable, almostunendurable wait” to see whether they fit together. The wait was especially nerve-racking because the ships en route to the invasion beaches all operated under radio silence. He may have been in command, but he had no idea what was happening, and he felt utterly helpless. “We cannot find out anything!” he scrawled in his diary in frustration. 17
ON OCTOBER 23, 1942, A LONG COLUMN of ships that included twenty-eight transports packed with 33,843 American soldiers began filing slowly out of Hampton Roads, Virginia, and into Chesapeake Bay to begin a four-thousand-mile journey to the coast of Africa. That same day in Egypt, forces of the British Eighth Army attacked the German Afrika Corps at El Alamein. The British pounded the outnumbered Germans for ten days, eventually winning a signal victory—indeed, the first major British victory of the war against a German army. It was a promising omen.
While the British assailed the Germans at El Alamein, the American convoy steamed eastward across the Atlantic. Destroyers scouted ahead, with watch standers scouring the sea for the telltale “feather” of an enemy periscope. Navy patrol planes circled overhead; two silver blimps drifted
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