Yet now Kesselring was strongly reinforced, appointing von Arnim as his field commander. He could clearly see what the Americans were attempting to do, and with the veteran 10th Panzer Division in hand, he sent them by rail to a point north of M’sila and them moved south on the narrow mountain roads south to confront the Americans. It was to be the first meeting engagement of German and American armored forces in the war.
Further north, the British had moved their 3rd Infantry Division to Cartagena, where it was refitting and preparing for a planned embarkation to North Africa. The two Brigades of 78th Division would also embark from smaller ports. Air squadrons were moving quickly into bases on the east coast of Spain, mostly at Almiera and Cartagena, with plans to move on Valencia as soon as it was clear of German presence. Gibraltar was under siege, with a stubborn German garrison holding out, the airfield and harbor approaches heavily mined, and tough troops in the tunnels and warrens of the Rock.
The only question was whether the Germans would contest the Western Med approached to Algiers. So in many ways, before the battle for Algiers could be fully engaged and settled on land, it was an argument between the ships and planes that would weigh heavily in the outcome. That battle was shaping up on the night of October 2nd, when Admiral Tovey gave the order to the newly reconstituted Force H to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar, pounding the German shore batteries on the Rock as they did so, and then move aggressively into the Western Med, with their objective being to cover the port of Oran and threaten a further eastern movement towards Algiers.
This move would effectively call Admiral Raeder’s bluff. He would either have to commit his combined battlegroup, or cede the sea-lanes to the British. He decided to fight.
Chapter 14
Captain Gordon MacRae was on the bridge when the contact was first made. Argos Fire was out on point, its radars and towed sonar array alert for any sign of the enemy. A Sunderland out of Cartagena had been looking over the waters some150 miles east of his position, spotting what looked to be a large surface warship a little after mid-day on the 3rd day of October, 1942. Low on fuel, the seaplane had to turn for home, but MacRae knew he had a big fish on the line, and notified Admiral Tovey.
Now in overall command of the joint US-British Naval Forces, Tovey was making a bold bid to seize control of the waters between Oran and Algiers. The former port was needed as the primary supply conduit supporting Patton’s move east towards Algiers, and it was also slated to receive British Divisions that Montgomery was designating for transfer to North Africa from Spain. Hube had withdrawn through Valencia and Barcelona, and was now entering France by rail with the three divisions he had under his command. Spain was a chaotic place, with Franco out of country in Lisbon, no real power center, and the Spanish Army melting away into the countryside for fear of Allied reprisals.
Gibraltar had been sealed off, but not taken, and the Straits had been cleared of mines, the shore batteries on the Rock pounded by the Allied Air force. The German garrison was a lost battalion that was now designated “Festung Gibraltar” By Hitler. They were a fanatical bunch, all SS men, and determined to make the Rock their final resting place, preferring death to surrender. For that reason, after a battalion of the Black Watch tested the defense and found it very potent, Churchill gave an order that no major assault was to be made. The fear was that the Germans would use heavy explosives to collapse the tunnels and caves, ruining years of engineering work. The truth was, the SS did not have such munitions at hand, and what little they did have was used in the town and harbor area to demolish the quays, sub pens, and other dockyard facilities.
“Let them stew,” said Churchill. “We’ll send them a message about gasoline and fire soon enough, and repay the courtesy they extended to our troops by giving them one last chance to surrender before they go up in smoke.”
Another hidden truth to the delay was the mystery that lay beneath Saint Michael’s Cave. It was not known whether or not the Germans had discovered anything there, and Churchill did not want an attack driving the enemy troops deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of those tunnels and caves. Instead, a plan was being devised for a raid by commandos. The British had detailed maps of every passage, gate, door, stair, ladder and tunnel under the Rock. They also knew of special hidden entrances that the Germans may not have discovered. It was thought that if a team of elite soldiers could penetrate the fortress, something might be found and guarded before the Germans ever had the chance to do the same. In this effort, Elena Fairchild was only too happy to offer the services of the highly trained group of Marines she had aboard Argos Fire—the Argonauts.
When she learned of the planned raid, she also requested a private meeting with Tovey to relate some information she had shared with only one other man, Captain MacRae. It concerned the fate of a British Sergeant, discovered in the Port of Ceuta, and not in the time he was born to…. The Raid, as it was now being called, was scheduled for October 15th, and so now the ship and crew had other business, the eyes and ears of Tovey’s fleet, well out in the vanguard.
The U-boat threat was the first worrisome problem. Nothing had been found as Argos Fire passed about 70 nautical miles north of Oran. All was quiet, but that was because the German U-Boat Kapitan Gerhard Feller on U-653 was also quiet. He had been laying low, still and unmoving, waiting for the vanguard of the British force to pass. Once Argos Fire was well to the east, he risked coming to periscope depth to have a look around.
MacRae’s crew had picked up some movement in the sound field, but there were a lot of ships churning up the sea. He nonetheless posted an indefinite undersea contact warning, but it would arrive too late for a doughty British Knight. Sir Galahad was 2nd in a line of three ships, with Sir Lancelot in the van and Sir Percival following. Tovey had grouped these three fast battlecruisers together as his forward scouting force, and their combined thirty 305mm main guns were thought capable of taking on all comers.
They were operating about ten nautical miles behind the Argos Fire, yet the one threat they were ill suited to defend against was a stealthy U-Boat. Feller saw them late in the day, their silhouettes dark on the sea ahead, and he was very close. He put one torpedo in the water to see if he could take the lead ship from behind, but then decided the number two target was better. He could fire from just under 5 miles, a fairly long shot, but within the range of his G7 Torpedoes.
And that is what he did. Three went out. One hit, and Sir Galahad was knocked from the saddle before it had a chance to join the fight. It was not a fatal hit. The fires it caused would put two 76mm guns out of action, temporarily sooting over the Type 275 Radar antenna, and also putting light damage on one of the 152mm secondary batteries. There was flooding, and resulting loss of speed, and so the ship was ordered to make for the Spanish coast, the nearest Allied occupied port being Almeria.
The British had a pair of fast destroyers off the port side of Argos Fire, and they moved out ahead to feel their way towards the contact reported by that Sunderland. At a little after 01:00, Executive Officer on Argos Fire, Commander Dean, took a radar report that confirmed the contact at about 23 nautical miles, due east. Word was passed forward to the British destroyers, Beagle and Brilliant, but there was grave trouble ahead. By the time they got the warning, their own lookouts were sounding the alarm, “Ship ahead!”