COSSAC. Stephen C. Kepher
becoming difficult “to work up much enthusiasm in the preparations to meet so unlikely an event as a German seaborn invasion.”1 To rekindle interest and enthusiasm in the professional lives of his troops and subordinate commanders, who “had had their fill of manning coast defenses,” he proposed that 1st Corps consider taking the offensive. What better offensive action to take than to plan a crossing of the Rhine and invading Germany?
As he wrote the outline for this map study / command exercise, he found himself “confronted with the problem of how to get 1st British Corps from Yorkshire to Hamburg and points east.”
Appalled by the immense difficulties of such an operation that the briefest consideration made only too obvious, this being an affair of the imagination only, we decided to solve the problem by means of a simple assumption. Starting with the heartening passage, “The British Army having successfully invaded Germany from the Northwest … ” our prospectus went on to describe a situation of reasonable orthodoxy. But it was a refreshing change to be toying with German place names rather than those of our own home towns.2
Morgan was right to be appalled. There wasn’t much history of large-scale amphibious assaults or of combined operations in the British terminology of the time (attempted landings from the sea against prepared enemy defenses) in the two hundred years or so before World War II. The one most people could remember, the Gallipoli campaign, didn’t inspire confidence in the concept. Nor had attempts in Norway or Dakar in the current war done much to rebalance the record.
It’s true that there were landings from the sea throughout history. The British had a particular fondness for “descents” or raids, but those were, in the main, unopposed landings, seeking to “hit ’em where they ain’t” followed by either a brief action and return to the sea or by a set battle, as in the case of Quebec during the Seven Years’ War, or at New York in the American War of Independence.3 How to “kick the door in,” fight one’s way ashore, and stay with a modern army was a different matter. What could be said was that amphibious operations on a larger scale than ever seen or imagined were the only way for the Allies to take the fight to both the Germans and the Japanese. While there was some study of the subject before World War II, how to do it was largely worked out during the war as operations were conducted—and there was no one agreed-on way of doing it.
In 1938 the British created a modest establishment, the Inter-Service Training and Development Centre, staffed by four officers: a Royal Navy captain, a British Army major, a Royal Air Force wing commander, and a captain of the Royal Marines. Their task, as then captain L. E. H. Maund, the “chairman” of the center, put it, was to show that an assault from the sea “was practical, to indicate how the assault should go and to design and build the equipment that would make it practical.”4
By the time war broke out they had managed to design and have built a small number of landing craft of various types, primarily for the raids they envisioned would occur. They had given consideration to what kind of beach organization there should be to handle troops and supplies that had landed, experimented with raids launched from submarines, examined what types of vessels could be converted into transports or assault ships, and put forth some general theories of operation, mainly regarding small “hit-and-run” operations with an emphasis on gaining tactical surprise, landing at night, and, consequently, the minimal use of naval gunfire support.
In 1940 and again in 1941 they placed what were at the time large orders with Andrew Higgins of New Orleans, whose boats were also being ordered by the U.S. Marines. Higgins, the inheritor of a great deal of money as well as a timber business, was a trained naval architect and had a great deal of experience building fast, light, wooden boats that were at home in the bayous and that had been highly desired by rumrunners and bootleggers during Prohibition.5 The British preferred Higgins’ thirty-six-foot version while the Marines opted for the thirty-two-foot size, the British and Higgins believing that the larger boat was a better sea boat and had the advantage of carrying a few more men.
For U.S. armed forces, the Marines had spent the most time thinking about amphibious warfare, beginning with America’s pivot toward Asia that started in the 1920s. As with most projects in the interwar years, training and exercises were modest, as were the budgets, and much of what was considered was essentially theoretical. The Marines published the Tentative Manual for Landing Operations in 1934, which was adopted by the Navy in 1937; with modifications, it remained “the book” during World War II. The Marines rejected the idea of night landings and surprise, believing that the difficulties outweighed the advantages. Instead, they opted for the employment of naval gunfire support, close air support, and ultimately days or weeks of preparatory bombardment. “There was no ambiguity in the doctrine. Surprise was not significant. Battles were, ideally, to be won with the deliberate, methodical, sustained use of overwhelming firepower, followed up by a direct, mass infantry assault.”6 This was to be World War II in the central Pacific.
The U.S. Army was late 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