in considering amphibious war. Notwithstanding the fact that projection of American power was going to require shipping to move forces to operational theaters, the Army was initially focused on hemispheric defense. As with so much else, Dunkirk and the fall of France changed the basic assumptions. While there had been limited exercises with the Navy in the 1930s, efforts became serious starting in 1941. In 1942 Army units that were to be part of TORCH conducted amphibious training in the Caribbean and on the Atlantic coast with the 1st Marine Division and with the Navy’s Amphibious Corps. “The Army’s experience in working with the Navy and Marine Corps did not persuade it that the Marine Corps doctrine was the best solution to amphibious warfare.”7 Indeed, Gen. George Patton reported after the TORCH landings, “Daylight landings are too costly and will be successful only against weak or no opposition.”8
Obviously, there are differences between isolating and then capturing an island and invading somewhere on a continental shoreline. Still, there are viable options from which to choose and questions to answer—daylight or night, how long a preparatory bombardment, how to employ tactical and strategic aircraft, can isolation of the invasion area be achieved and how, use of airborne troops, speed of buildup, and so on. The amphibious assaults conducted in the Mediterranean and at Normandy were both joint and combined—more than one military service was involved from more than one country. Each one became a bespoke, one-off operation with the British approach dominating the planning. OVERLORD was, to a degree, the exception. In developing the outline plan for the cross-Channel attack, the COSSAC planners would be working with a narrow knowledge base.
Combined Operations
As the last British troops were being evacuated from France in June 1940, Churchill was hectoring the Chiefs of Staff (COS) to find some way to take offensive action. “The passive resistance war, in which we have acquitted ourselves so well must come to an end. I look to the [British] joint Chiefs of Staff to propose me measures for a vigorous, enterprising and ceaseless offensive against the whole German-occupied coastline.”9
While more ambitious in concept than practical in execution, this exhortation led to the adjutant-general (the commandant) of the Royal Marines, Lt. Gen. Alan Bourne, being appointed by the COS as the first “Commander of Raiding Operations on coasts in enemy occupation and Advisor to the Chiefs of Staff on Combined Operations.”10 In addition to planning and conducting raids across the Channel, he was tasked with providing advice on the organization for conducting amphibious assaults, supervising all training relating to combined operations (including training the crews who would operate the special purpose craft that were to be built), and developing and issuing contracts for the production of those craft. As one might anticipate, the work of the Inter-Service Training and Development Centre became part of the Combined Operations domain. While all three services were involved, Bourne and his staff were headquartered in the Admiralty.
General Bourne was in the job for about a month, during which time there were some small raids that achieved little. In July Churchill’s thoughts returned to the idea of large raids and imaginative enterprises. Having never approved Bourne’s appointment, he now desired to see someone more senior and more unorthodox in the position.
Sixty-eight-year-old Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes certainly fit that description. Early in his career, Keyes, as commanding officer of a destroyer in support of the efforts to rescue the legations besieged in Peking (Beijing) during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, was eager to get into the fight. He “handed over command of his destroyer to his First Lieutenant and joined an army column [marching on the Chinese capital]…. He was the first man into the city [Beijing], climbing a 30-foot wall.”11 He survived the naval battles at Gallipoli in 1916 and was best known for planning and conducting the raid on German U-boat pens in Zeebrugge harbor in 1918. He had retired in 1935 but returned to active duty in 1940. He also served as a member of Parliament from 1934 to 1943. A friend of Churchill’s, he became director of Combined Operations in July 1940.
Within a week, Churchill was asking Keyes for proposals for medium-sized raids using between five thousand and ten thousand men, to be launched in September or October at the latest. When Keyes received the memo, the strengths of the Commandos and independent companies that had been formed for raiding “were 500 and 750 respectively, and of the latter 250 were earmarked to go to Gibraltar.”12
Keyes’ fifteen months as director were contentious, at best. He set up Combined Operations Headquarters (COHQ) as an independent entity, moving out of Admiralty offices and into the newly built and as-yet unoccupied New Scotland Yard building in Richmond Terrace, near Downing Street. This was a mixed blessing. The benefits of an independent command are many, but “from the material, naval personnel and psychological aspects, separation at this particular time, when everything depended on Admiralty effort, was a misfortune and led … to a good deal more than separation. The day of private navies and armies had dawned.”13 Not just the famous Commandos, which were the COHQ’s operational units, but eventually groups such as the Special Air Service, the Special Boat Service, the Long Range Desert Group, and even Gen. Orde Wingate’s Chindits in Burma were all part of a range of special operators that siphoned off some of the best small-unit leaders to what were arguably peripheral operations. Whatever their value may have been, they certainly appealed to Churchill’s late-Victorian sense of combat—just the thing for a former subaltern of cavalry who fought at Omdurman in Sudan in 1898 and who, as a war correspondent, was captured and then escaped from a Boer prisoner of war camp in 1899 and then wrote about the adventure for the newspapers.
While Keyes was in charge, there were advancements in the thinking about special ships and craft, particularly the LST (landing ship, tank), and the establishment of operational training centers. There were, however, few raids. “Plans were discussed, but the answer was always the same: you cannot assault an enemy coast without the proper number of special craft and until the crews have been trained.”14
Keyes went to Churchill and proposed that Commandos take the small island of Pantelleria, just south of Sicily, in order to improve the sea transport situation in the central Mediterranean. Both the COS and the commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet, Adm. Sir Andrew Cunningham, doubted that the island could be held.
Churchill gave Keyes permission to conduct the operation with two thousand commandos under his direct command. At the last minute, in December 1940, the operation was cancelled. Keyes was furious and blamed everyone from the COS on down, venting his anger in a string of memoranda to Churchill.15
There was also a fundamental organizational disagreement that could not be resolved. Keyes believed that as “director” of Combined Operations, he should have control over the planning and preparations for any amphibious operation and should be responsible for the training of all the naval personnel involved. This meant that on occasion, the idea and the planning for a raid originated in Combined Operations, as was the case for Pantelleria, and then it had to be “sold” to the appropriate commander in chief for execution. Consequently, coordination with the joint planners and any connection with strategic goals was not always achieved. Additionally, Keyes’ opinion of the COS bordered on contempt (in the midst of one meeting, he accused them of being “yellow”16), and he was inclined to give his opinions freely and directly to the prime minister, among others.
The COS took the view that only they were to give advice to the prime minister or the War Cabinet regarding strategy, that commanders of various operations or organizations were responsible to them not to COHQ, and, as for the reentry into the Continent, that “the planning and training for this must be the job of the Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, with his appropriate naval and air opposite numbers” (soon to be called the Combined Commanders).17 Consequently, the COS believed that the exact role of the head of Combined Operations needed to be redefined. Keyes was notified by Churchill that his title was now advisor of Combined Operations, not director. Keyes would not accept what he saw as a demotion and resigned.
On
