World Battlefronts: The Dawn’s Early Light

Algiers in the dawn of Nov. 8 was a white, triangular wound against the dun hills behind the harbor. Beyond its jetties, well out in the Mediterranean, a great naval concentration stood in from Gibraltar: the Royal Navy’s battleships Nelson and Rodney, the aircraft carrier Argus, cruisers, destroyers and transports laden with U.S. troops.

The first Allied bombers bore leaflets, imprinted with the American flag and a proclamation from Lieut. General Dwight David Eisenhower to the 252,000 Frenchmen, Arabs and Berbers of the town (see cut). A destroyer nosed past the barges across the entrance to the harbor, darted up to one of the docks, disgorged a small force of U.S. Rangers, who scurried toward the big, white French Admiralty Building on the waterfront. When the docks were clear the destroyer threw a few shells, starting great fires, and dashed out of the harbor.

A Vichy submarine put out beyond the barges, was promptly attacked. The Admiralty Building—on that day the headquarters of visiting Admiral Jean François Darlan—was quickly cleared of the invaders. Vichy said that they were captured.

Then the Allied planes returned and bombed the Admiralty. Naval guns from ships offshore shelled the docks. But most of the gunfire that the people of Algiers heard was from the east and west.

The Plan. Unfolding at Algiers that morning was a plan for the conquest of French North Africa. It was thorough and simple. Its initial objective was the seizure of the principal ports of French North Africa: Algiers and Oran on the Mediterranean, Casablanca on the Atlantic and Rabat, the capital of Morocco. These cities are more than ports and naval bases: they are also the keys to French North Africa’s railways, highways and airdrome system (see p. 22), and to the political control of French Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

With them in hand or enveloped, Dakar to the south of Casablanca could safely be left for later disposal, and the larger objectives of the U.S. entry into North Africa could unfold: first the joining of the U.S. forces in the northwest with the British in Libya, then the destruction of the Afrika Korps, the re-establishment of Allied mastery over the southern Mediterranean and finally assault on southern Europe.

Typified at Algiers was the plan of local attack which the U.S. forces carried out everywhere they landed. Most of their armored, snub-nosed barges from the convoys came, not to the port itself, but to the sandy beaches a few miles from the city. There they disgorged Rangers (U.S. commandomen) for initial landings, infantry, artillery and tanks to consolidate and widen the landings. Their purposes were to pincer the city itself, and to seize Blida and Maison-Blanche, Algiers’ two main airdromes.

Maison-Blanche fell without a fight; U.S. paratroops seized Blida airdrome. U.S troops marched quickly inland to cut the Algiers-Oran railway. U.S. and British fighters and light bombers flew in to the captured airdromes from carriers; other bombers arrived, probably from Gibraltar.

Soon the rail, highway and air approaches to Algiers from east and west on the land, and from Sardinia or Sicily by air, were commanded by the invaders. General Alfonse Pierre Juin, Vichy’s military commander in North Africa, reported to Vichy that gunfire was nearing the town, but there was no detailed evidence that his native troops and French officers put up more than a token resistance. At 7 p.m. on Sunday, 16 hours after the U.S. troops landed, he and Admiral Darlan agreed to surrender Algiers. Over the docks, the flames and smoke were still rising.

First a lone British destroyer, then heavier fleet units moved into the city’s anchorage. The Union Jack was the first Allied flag up over Algiers’ docks. (At first the Tricolor continued to fly over Governor Yves Charles Chatel’s residence. The warships did not long have the harbor in peace: the afternoon after Algiers’ surrender, German Stukas (presumably from Sicily or Sardinia) attacked. Twelve miles offshore Axis, British and U.S. planes mixed in the first of many battles which will be fought before the Allies have unquestioned command of the Mediterranean air.

Oran and Mers-el-Kebir, the nearby naval base where the British attacked parts of the French Fleet in 1940, were also flanked. The main landings were at Arzew, on a promontory 25 miles northeast of Oran. On the narrow, easily accessible shore between the hills and the sea, other forces seized Bou Sfer and Cap Signale, west of the city. Then they drove for: 1) Oran’s four airdromes, 2) the parallel railway and highway coursing down the coastal plain. By land, on the flanks and in the rear of the historic city, the encirclement was swift and totally effective.

It was different at Mers-el-Kebir and in Oran’s own harbor, where Darlan’s Navy had only a few small ships, but manned the coastal guns around the naval base, the docks and in the hills. (According to some pre-invasion reports, Germans had also manned coastal batteries in North Africa.) Vichy said that two Allied corvettes were sunk; two French torpedo boats and a sloop were damaged, probably by aircraft from La Senia, Tafaraoui and one other captured airfield. Last to fall was Mers-el-Kebir’s airdrome.

Rabat, on the Atlantic coast 475 miles from Oran, was an incidental objective in a general assault upon Morocco. Landings were made north of the city at coastal Mehdia, to the south on the narrow shore of Fedhala and Bouznika; then immediate marches upon Rabat’s own airdrome, which was quickly evacuated by the Vichy -french, and on another at Salé, eight miles northeast of the capital.

Casablanca was squeezed between the landings around Rabat and others to the south, beyond the high, rocky coast immediately below the port. First and most important of these southerly attacks was at Safi, a port and airdrome center 140 miles southwest of Casablanca. Next day more troops landed well south of Safi, at Agadir and Mogodor.

Then the U.S. land and air strategy in Morocco became clear: to advance by land up an excellent highway toward Casablanca, at the same time to fan still farther inland toward the Moroccan army’s chief base at Marrakech, 100 miles from the sea in the high Atlas Mountains. At Marrakech, if anywhere, army units loyal to Vichy would probably make their stand. But with Marrakech in hand, the U.S. troops would also have the southern terminus of Morocco’s railway system and command of a rail route to Casablanca itself.

By the second night U.S. troops from the northeast were within four miles of Casablanca—although they had probably met the stiffest resistance they had yet found on land. But the most spectacular attacks were upon the port’s great, artificial anchorage and upon the Vichy warships there: the battleship Jean Bart, uncompleted and now a stationary fortress with its 15-in. guns; several cruisers, destroyers, gunboats. Bombers, repeatedly attacking the Jean Bart, set her aflame.

Other Vichy warships steamed out to meet an Allied fleet and, according to Vichy, suffered heavy damage. U.S. torpedo boats charged into the harbor. Vichy said that several were sunk by harbor anti-aircraft guns, lowered to fire at the sea.

Closing upon Casablanca and its airdromes, the U.S. forces were fighting for Vichy’s second-best Atlantic naval anchorage (the best: Dakar), a sizable segment of Vichy’s Navy, Vichy Africa’s principal Atlantic railhead and a modern city (pop. 257,000) which was the pride of colonial France. After the capture of the three key cities—Casablanca, Oran and Algiers—the rest of French North Africa might well be the Allies’ for the taking.

Tunisia, marked by obvious strategy for U.S. penetration toward Libya, was now at the eastern end of French rail and highway lines already dominated by U.S. forces. Its commander, General Barre, gathered what forces he had in the interior and said: “We will be attacked and we will defend ourselves.” More serious battles in Tunisia were likely to be between Brigadier General Jimmy Doolittle’s U.S. planes and Axis aircraft from Sicily, a scant 140 miles away. This week when a bomber bearing General Doolittle was attacked, he took over the controls from his wounded co-pilot and continued his flight. U.S. troops landed at the excellent port of Philippeville, 210 miles east of Algiers, and by the end of the second day were within 60 miles of the border of Tunisia. The U.S. ground forces, once they were ready to move eastward, had direct rail and road routes to southeastern Tunisia and its “Little Maginot Line” of desert forts and pillboxes pointed the other way—toward Libya.

The Task was anything but simple.

Vichy had in North and West Africa (Dakar) some 120,000 troops, mostly Arab, Berber and Senegalese enlisted men and noncoms with French officers, and the thoroughly Germanized Foreign Legion. Thanks partly to many a Frenchman’s and colonial’s ingrained hatred of the Nazis, partly to the assiduous labors of De Gaullists and U.S. State Department agents (see p. 15), the invaders could hope for only nominal resistance from many of Vichy’s troops. The colonial air force had perhaps 700 planes, many of them obsolescent, and many of these were concentrated at Dakar.

But the six months’ experience of the British in Madagascar, where resistance ended only last week (see p. 28), was warning that resistance might be prolonged. Lieut. General Dwight David Eisenhower took more than enough men (Vichy said 140,000) to fight it out by land and air if need be.

Vichy’s Navy was also an unknown quantity. Unhappily for Vichy, most of its Navy was at: 1) Dakar, 1,500 miles southwest of Casablanca; 2) Toulon, France’s base 400 miles north of Algiers. The battleship Richelieu, three light cruisers, several destroyers and some submarines at Dakar did not figure in the initial defense. At Toulon were the battleships Strasbourg, Dunkerque (repaired after its shelling by the British in 1940) and Provence (also damaged but repaired), probably seven cruisers, 25 destroyers, 27 submarines and one seaplane carrier (the Commandant Teste). Axis reports said Toulon naval units had put to sea.

At least some of the Navy had the will, and the North African Army had the numbers, to obey the order which Marshal Petain issued from Vichy: “France and her honor are at stake. We have been attacked. We will defend ourselves. That is the order which I give.”