Often thought of as a small preliminary operation, few realized the massive scale of TORCH. While not quite as big as OVERLORD, it was certainly in the same league. The question of whether or not it would be successful now was one part political, and three parts military. Neutral Portugal was none too happy to think that their nation would soon be a war zone, and Franco was none too happy to think his Army was now going to have to muster along the Portuguese frontier, and more German troops were already clogging his rail lines, bound for Madrid.
His regime might not survive a successful Allied invasion of Spain, and he knew that Don Carlos, the youngest child of the Duke of Tuscany, was waiting in the wings to re-establish the Monarchy. Even though he had three living older brothers who might also claim the throne, none expressed any interest in that adventure. As for the troops he might command, their loyalty was always questionable, and there was a strong Nationalist movement that was very much opposed to Franco’s flirtations with Hitler. All told, Franco had about 24 divisions by 1940, but of these he probably could count on no more than 12, with each division having the combat potential of a brigade, if even that. He clustered these into three Corps at Madrid, Seville and Valencia, and to these he added three armored regiments with old German hand me down Panzer IIs, a few Russian T-26s left over from the Civil War, and a few Pz IVDs, no more than ten per regiment. Franco had good reason to be nervous.
Nor were the French really happy now that the moment of promised retribution from their former Allies was at hand. Some had already begun to think over the consequences of their acquiescence in joining the Axis powers. The gallows cast a long cold shadow in their minds, and if Charlemagne’s Ghost could arise that hour and see the men and machines now marching in his name, he might have wept.
Yet there was plenty of gloom and doom to go around on all sides. The Americans were still disgruntled about the operation, and harbored many inner doubts that were often expressed in their war dairies. The overall ground commander, the irascible George Patton,. Privately wrote that: “The job I am going on is about as desperate a venture as has ever been undertaken by any force in the world’s history.” Yet outwardly he put on his war face, telling Eisenhower that he would get to the beaches one way or another, and not leave until the enemy had been vanquished, or he himself was dead. He told the same thing to the President in a private meeting before the convoy departed.
Another gritty General, Ernest Harmon of the 2nd Armored Division, had been profoundly shocked to observe the results of a practice assault landing on the shores of Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. His troops and equipment ended up scattered all over the coast, taking the better part of a day to reorganize. This was an early morning landing, with good light, on a calm friendly shore, with no enemy present, and a lighthouse beacon there as a guidepost to boot. The thought that he would soon be landing at night, on hostile shores, possibly under enemy fire, was suddenly most disconcerting. Eisenhower had been treated to the same shock when he witnessed the mock landing of the 1st Infantry in Scotland—another disaster with troops clumped in groups on the shore, aimless, unable to form up and get underway towards their objectives. Now the wisdom of the British end of the plan, landing in a friendly port at Lisbon, became apparent.
The only thing that would counterbalance this raw inexperience on the part of the Americans, was an enemy that had languished in Morocco for years without so much as seeing a single enemy plane, the French. Their “divisions” were undermanned, ill equipped and led by officers with little wartime experience. Those that had seen combat had experienced the demoralization of defeat, seen their country occupied by the Germans, and then they had to wrestle with the fact that they were now “collaborators.” In 1940 and 1941, with Germany seeming invincible, they might have thought they had joined the winning side. Now, in the late summer of 1942, things were looking a little different. Rumors began to circulate that the entire American Army was coming, with thousands of ships, planes and tanks.
So no one was happy, on either side, and a most unusual battle was finally about to begin. The Second Front was opening in the West, not soon enough for the Soviets, not where the Americans had hoped to see it come, and not to anybody’s liking. It was an operation mounted because the Allies had decided that only one thing could be worse—idling through the last months of the year and failing to mount some challenge to the Axis powers that had ruled the day since the outbreak of the war.
Chapter 20
The battle for control of the Moroccan coast would first have to be fought on and over the seas that washed that forsaken shore. In this, the Allied navies would now show the tremendous naval power at their disposal. In the north, the Force H had fleet carriers Ark Royal and Victorious, escort carriers Argus and Avenger, three battleships, four heavy cruisers and scores of destroyers, with their primary role as covering force for the British landings at Lisbon. Force C in the Canaries had been thinned out, but it still had the carriers Glorious and Furious, two Knight Class heavy cruisers, backed by three more cruisers, Jamaica, Kenya and Bermuda, and a destroyer squadron.
In the south, the Americans would send the carrier Ranger, new escort carriers Sangamon, Santee, Suwanee, and Chenango, the battleships Texas, Massachusetts and New York, four heavy and two light cruisers, with over 40 pesky destroyers. Rather than being divided in to three groups as in the original plan, this substantial naval force sailed as one massive formation. The carriers had ceaselessly patrolled the skied to eliminate the U-Boat threat, and now the American troop convoy was approaching Casablanca, ready to strike all along the coast of Morocco in one mighty blow. It was this concentration of the American force that would make this attack so potent, and yet so prone to chaos and disorder as had already been seen in exercises and rehearsals.
For their part, the Axis naval forces seemed puny by comparison. Normandie was still needing repairs at Toulon, but the alarm sent by Himmler had convinced the French that it might be moved first to Algiers where the remaining work could be completed. Other than that ship, only the battleship Jean Bart remained operational at Casablanca, joined by two cruisers and five destroyers. The Germans then had their battlegroup at Gibraltar, consisting of Kaiser Wilhelm, Hindenburg, and the carriers Goeben and Prinz Heinrich. The Axis forces were therefore outnumbered six to two in battleships, eleven to two in carriers, and could simply never match the Allies in cruisers and destroyers. In spite of that, the French were at sea that morning, unaware of the storm of steel that was now blowing in from the west.
A supply operation for the Canaries was underway in the south with a group of Siebel ferries and six French transports escorted by the light cruiser Lannes and four destroyers. Further north Jean Bart had left Casablanca with what was left of the Force De Raid. Instead of being little more than a well armored moored shore battery as in the original history, that ship would now operate as a dangerous raider in what might now be the final act of the French Navy in the Atlantic.