World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF AFRICA: Tips and Torpedoes

Along Africa’s 6,000-mile west coast the Axis fought two wars, one of torpedoes, one of words.

> U-boats, hunting in packs as they had off North America last spring and summer, struck hard at supply ships of the United Nations. Berlin claimed twelve ships directly outside Cape Town, many others off Freetown, Sierra Leone and other west coast ports. Biggest claims: the 20,119-ton Canadian liner Duchess of Atholl and the 23,456-ton Orcades.

> The Germans and their Vichyfrench cohorts broadcast repeated reports that the United Nations were massing for a land and sea assault on Dakar, tip of Africa’s western bulge. Said the Nazi-controlled Paris radio: “Important U.S. troop contingents have landed in Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Liberia, French Equatorial Africa, the Belgian Congo and South Africa. We have information that a U.S. general will soon be in command of all enemy forces in Africa.” Another Axis report said British and U.S. forces were concentrating in the British colony of Gambia, some 100 miles south of Dakar.

Liberian Landing. One cause for Vichy’s anxiety was a huge convoy sighted near the Cape Verde Islands heading south toward Dakar. When the convoy passed on, far out to sea, Vichy breathed easier, but not for long. The ships debarked an A.E.F. at Liberia, the small Negro republic about 600 miles southeast of Dakar.

Unannounced, except by a lone Reuters news-agency dispatch, a U.S. landing in Liberia was no surprise. Long before Pearl Harbor the U.S. had been making preparations to establish a base there if need should arise. Pan American Airways, with U.S. Army & Navy approval, had contracted with the government of President Edwin Barclay for a clipper base in the lush, tropical country where rubber and coffee grow wild among tangled orchids. A huge airfield, larger than needed for commercial flying, was built. Because the coast lacks harbors for vessels of over 40 tons, Liberia, about Ohio’s size, would be useful chiefly as an air base. Founded in 1847 by freed U.S. slaves, Liberia is traditionally friendly to the U.S. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co.’s model rubber plantation (complete with golf course) is the country’s biggest industry. Axis broadcasts predicted that Liberia would soon join the United Nations, provide a base for attacking Dakar.

Only hint of real action in the Dakar region was Vichy’s announcement that a French airman, Captain Henri-Laurent Dailliere of the Dakar garrison, had been killed fighting “in defense of the French Empire and French unity.” Unofficial reports said he was pegged while trying to scout the British base at Freetown, south of Dakar.