gave further guidance to Paget:
German morale and strength in the West may deteriorate at any time in the future to a degree that will permit us to establish forces on the Continent. You are, therefore, to plan and prepare for a return to the Continent to take advantage of such a situation….
You should continue your study of a major raiding operation against one of the main French Atlantic ports in case it becomes desirable to carry one out but preparations for such an operation are not to be allowed to delay your preparations for your primary task.
The Advisor on Combined Operations [is] to be consulted at all stages of the planning.2
Around the same time, Mountbatten and Commo. John Hughes-Hallett, representing Combined Operations, were invited to join General Paget in attending a staff exercise conducted by the various Home Forces commanders. Each of the generals and their staffs were instructed to prepare and present “an outline plan for the seizure of the Cherbourg Peninsula, to hold it for a week, and then withdraw back to England.”3 In other words, to plan something similar to SLEDGEHAMMER, or IMPERATOR, but in Normandy, not the Pas-de-Calais.
Lt. Gen. Bernard Montgomery, commander of South Eastern Command, presented last, and “after explaining the hazards of such an operation, went on to point out that it would be easier and more worthwhile not to withdraw the troops but to flood the Carentan Marshes and hold the Peninsula.”4 Although this would create a lodgment and a base for future offensive actions, Montgomery did not address how the troops were to break out and drive toward Germany through the German troops that undoubtedly would be in strong defensive positions on the other side of the marshes. Still, it made a change from considering the Pas-de-Calais.
From these modest beginnings emerged the Combined Commanders, sometimes called the Combined Commanders-in-Chief. The Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, Sir Bernard Paget; Air Officer Commanding Fighter Command, Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory; and Sir Charles Little, Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, had many duties. Being the Combined Commanders was a somewhat informal collateral duty as the British armed forces slowly reoriented themselves from a purely defensive posture to consideration of offensive action from the British Isles. The RAF’s Bomber Command went its own way as a result of a directive issued by the Air Staff in February 1942. It was authorized to bomb Germany “without restriction,” and Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris went at it with a will.5 He waged his own offensive against German cities, believing that charring enough German acreage would make a cross-Channel attack unnecessary.
The Combined Commanders were required to consult with Combined Operations Headquarters when developing their plans. Mountbatten’s unique position of being both head of an independent headquarters and a de facto member of the COS created problems on occasion, particularly if he disagreed with the Combined Commanders, although perhaps less often than it could have done.
The Combined Commanders took up the question of crossing the Channel and reached the conclusion that the Pas-de-Calais was the proper landing area, for one chief reason: in 1942 RAF fighters were unable to provide air cover in any meaningful way over other possible beaches. The Pas-de-Calais was also the closest viable landing site to Antwerp, which was identified as a critical port of supply for a drive into Germany. Mountbatten argued instead for the Cherbourg Peninsula (and, by extension, for the French Atlantic ports)—having seen the merit in the idea presented by General Montgomery and made it his own. He also thought that air cover could be provided by fitting the fighters with auxiliary fuel tanks.
Gen. Sir Alan Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff and chair of the COS, also believed that the Pas-de-Calais was the proper location. On 10 March 1942 Mountbatten attended the COS’ weekly meeting for the first time. As noted in Brooke’s diary, they discussed “the problem of assistance to Russia by operations in France, with [a] large raid or lodgment. [It was] decided [the] only hope was to try to draw off air forces from Russia and for that purpose [the] raid must be carried off on Calais front. Now directed investigations to proceed further.”6 Still, Mountbatten was keen to go his own way.
He continued to press for Normandy and the Baie de la Seine in meetings with the Combined Commanders. He next brought this up at a meeting of the COS on 28 March. Mountbatten, having a choice of sitting either with the COS or with the Commanders, sat with the Commanders and, when his turn to speak came, “roundly denounced their plan [for the Pas-de-Calais]…. In the end the Commanders left the room with orders to work on the Normandy plan.”7 However correct he might have been, the Commanders had no great appreciation for the assistance that Mountbatten had given them. There was, as a result, some amount of friction between the various headquarters, and both Paget at Home Forces HQ and the RAF still believed in the Pas-de-Calais.
Early British planning for crossing the Channel was also informed by their preparations for a German invasion in 1940. Hughes-Hallett was Mountbatten’s naval advisor at Combined Operations and was as expert in the details of amphibious assault as almost anyone in Britain. He noted that the experiences of anti-invasion planning in 1940–41 brought to light “the enormous magnitude of problems to be overcome before even a minor amphibious operation could be … successfully carried out.”8 The tides in the Channel are difficult, particularly for small craft. Both the RAF and the German air force, the Luftwaffe, had major forces that would have to be brought to the fight. Logistical support, specialized training for the crews operating the landing craft if not the assault troops as well, and timing issues were staggeringly complex. In Hughes-Hallett’s opinion, there were few army officers who had any real understanding of the magnitude of the problem, except perhaps for those few who had been personally involved in planning amphibious attacks or training troops for them.
The Combined Commanders had planners, of course. Brig. Colin McNabb for the army, Commo. Cyril E. Douglas-Pennant for the navy, and Air Marshal Sholto Douglas were the head planners. As General Morgan later observed, “Just as no nobleman of olden times was apparently a nobleman unless he employed his tame jester, so in 1943 no commander was alleged to be worth his place in the field unless he retained his own planner.”9 This was a comment on the proliferation of planners, not their quality. McNabb worked well with the Americans at ETOUSA and went on to serve as brigadier general staff for Kenneth Anderson’s First Army in Tunisia, where he was killed in combat. Douglas-Pennant commanded the naval assault forces for GOLD BEACH on 6 June, and Sholto Douglas became the commander of Coastal Command in January 1944, after serving as the senior RAF commander in the Middle East.
A principal problem for the planners was the custom of the COS to require them to examine problems and design plans without a specific operation associated with the plan they were asked to create. Consequently, their work was subject to constant revision by higher authorities. “Each such revision was liable to call for variation or amendment of the plan put forward, in many instances necessitating cancellation or re-execution of work already put in by troops on the ground.”10 Another problem was that the fighting was going on in the Mediterranean, was likely to remain there, and, consequently, planners in London were far removed from any possibility of action.
The “Planning Racket”
In early 1942, with the U.S. Army’s Special Observer’s Group in London and its evolution into ETOUSA, the Americans arrived, full of enthusiasm and lacking experience.
On 7 February 1942 Col. Ray Barker, USA, commander of the 30th Field Artillery Regiment at the newly built training facility of Camp Roberts in California, received orders to report to the New York port of embarkation. He stopped in Washington, D.C., on the way and discovered that he was to take over the artillery section of the Special Observers Group in London. This meant that his promotion to brigadier general was deferred, but he told the chief of field artillery, “Never mind about the promotion part of it, if I can just go where the war is.”11 Having spent some amount of time in England in the interwar years, and being a student of British history,
