The plan was for the heavy armor to land at Lisbon, then quickly commandeer trains that the Portuguese had been quietly moving to the outskirts of the city. A cover story about work on a bridge causing a backlog was put out to mask the buildup, and it fooled everyone except Himmler. Unfortunately, Himmler could not convince Goring that he should violate neutral Portuguese airspace and bomb those valuable train cars and engines, and Goring would not act unless he received specific orders from Hitler. So 6th Armored Division was going to get ashore, and by the time they arrived, the skies above the port were seething with every fighter the British could bring on their aircraft carriers, with hundreds more landing on Portuguese airfields.
One thing the British had mastered in the early years of the war was the art of rapid forward deployment for the RAF squadrons assigned to support the campaign. They realized that fighters would govern the front, and a preponderance of fighter aircraft was an absolute necessity. The ratio would be at least four for every bomber, and preferably six. The initial cover would be provided by the FAA, but as soon as possible, Spitfire squadrons would be rushed to Portuguese airfields from England. Number 322 and 324 Squadrons would be the first to arrive, and where they could operate from good bases, the Stuka was dead. Those two groups brought in 72 Spitfires, and soon they ruled the roost over Lisbon.
The 43rd Wessex landed quickly with the armor, and advanced up the rail lines towards Madrid. There they would be opposed by the first of three German divisions that would react to the invasion, the 337th Infantry. It had been assigned to 7th Army headquartered in Bordeaux for some time, but was about to get its first real combat experience, at least for most of the men in the division at that time. The man in charge, however, General Eric Marcks, had been blooded in Russia, commanding the 101st Light Division, so he knew what he was doing. He left a leg in Russia, replaced with a wooden prosthesis, and it seemed like he was put out to pasture with the 337th. Now he was front and center in the war on the emerging “Second Front.”
Coming from Madrid by rail, the 337th detrained near the Portuguese border and sent its recon battalion across to scout out the situation. There it ran into Montgomery, who had come forward to look over the ground near the border, and with him he had the whole of 129th Brigade, including a battalion of the new Churchill tanks from the 34th Armored Brigade attached to the Wessex Division. He was spoiling for a fight, and determined to be the man who returned Gibraltar to the Crown. True to form, he waited to deploy two regiments of the division artillery before he launched a full brigade assault on the German 327th Recon Battalion.
The Germans there had a high proportion of veterans that had rotated in from the Soviet front, and those men held their ground tenaciously, then began a well coordinated and very stubborn withdrawal. It was typical Monty, using the mass of his brigade as a weapon of attrition, but the Germans had fought on much more difficult ground in Russia, and they acquitted themselves well.
Meanwhile, the British 6th Armored Division had taken the trains from Lisbon south, along the rail that passed east of Lagos and then ran along the southern coast towards the border. It was here that Hube’s 16th Panzer Division had arrived on the scene after a long rail march along the eastern coast of Spain, through Barcelona, Valencia, Murcia to Malaga and thence through Cordoba to Seville and the Portuguese border on the southern coast just west of the small port of Huelva. The rapidity of this move was due to well practiced experience on the dismal rail net in Russia, and in making it, the Germans had successfully covered Cadiz, and the airfield at Rota.
The bulk of Hube’s division concentrated near the coast road and rail. He deployed all four of his Panzergrenadier battalions there, with both his Panzer battalions, and they ran head on into the entire British 6th Armored Division coming up the coast by both road and rail. The action was fought for the coastal town of Villa Real, and extended some 15 kilometers to the north, and it was like two knights jousting in armor, with both striking telling blows, and both sides would have dented shields and armor before it would be decided.
In the south, the US landings were every bit the fine mess that men like Patton, Harmon and others expected. The plan had been altered to lead with the 1st US Infantry, perhaps the best trained unit in the army. It was going to put its 18th and 26th regimental Combat Teams ashore to seize Rabat and Port Lyautey some 80 kilometers northeast of Casablanca. The 26th landed at Mehdia, stormed inland and took its objective. The 18th, however, came in hard at Rabat, took that town, driving out the 2nd Zouave Regiment in the process, and then milled about, trying to sort through crates of weapons and supplies, re-assemble mixed up companies, while one battalion was still foundering about in the high surf. The regiment was leaderless, because its commanding officer, had landed somewhere else.
The naval transport he was on got fouled up with elements of the 16th RCT, which had been tasked with taking Port Lasfar and El Jadida, nearly 100 kilometers southwest of Casablanca. Colonel Greer had been squinting at the shoreline, then staring at his map. He should be seeing the river mouth near Rabat, but the only report of an estuary was indicating it was 20 kilometers farther north.
“That can’t be right,” he growled. “The goddamn town is right there. Just put us ashore.” It wasn’t until he slogged off his LVT, waded ashore, and made his way into that town, that he learned where he was. To his great surprise, he bumped into soldier wearing the shoulder patch of the 16th RCT. He was 180 kilometers southeast of his regiment, and when Patton found him, coming ashore at El Jadida, he read him the riot act, ordered him to get back on anything that would float, and get his ass up to Rabat on the double.
Those two small ports were just big enough to get elements of Task Force Red ashore, with much needed supporting armor. With Patton there, this “mess,” as he first saw it, was quickly sorted out, and he was personally directing traffic with his riding crop pointing out where he wanted the units to go—northeast, to Casablanca.
It was then that a fateful decision was made on the part of the defending forces. Reports had been coming in to Kesselring all morning, and now he had a fairly good idea of where the main landings were, to either side of Casablanca. But there was one other raid mounted much farther south at Safi. There Lt. Colonel Rosenfeld had made a pre-dawn assault to seize the small port and the airfield about 4 kilometers north at Sidi Bou Zid.
This port had two direct rail lines coming to it, one from Marrakech to the southeast, and another spur to the north from the main rail line from that city to Casablanca. It was there, at Marrakech, that a French Division was posted as a standing garrison unit, but the German 327th Division had just arrived the day before the invasion. It was to wait there for its supplies arriving the next day before moving to the coast with orders to eventually be transported by sea to take over garrison duty on the three German held islands in the Canaries. This would allow General Kubler to then mount his next offensive move against the British bastion of Tenerife.
But that would never happen now.
When word came in of the landing at Safi, the immediate reaction was for the 327th to move there, but Kesselring intervened. “No,” he said to a staff adjutant. “From all reports, there is only a single regiment landed at Safi. The French Marrakech Division can go there by road and retake those ports. Send orders for the 327th to get back on those trains and head north for Casablanca. I will see that the division supplies are re-routed as well.”