The Operation Torch convoys sail

On 24 October 1942 the second part of the Western Task Force of Operation Torch put out into the Atlantic from Hampton Roads, the great anchorage at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. Aboard the cruiser USS Augusta sailed the commander of the naval force, Rear Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt, and the commander of the land forces, Major General George Patton. The first group of transports and warships had left Hampton Roads on the afternoon of the previous day. Together with the groups that joined at sea over the following days, the force numbered more than a hundred warships and merchant vessels and carried some 34,000 troops to French Morocco. Few amphibious expeditions in history have made so long a sea passage straight to the landing beaches, without a stop in port on the far side of the ocean.

It is often added that on this day the two other task forces of Operation Torch sailed from Britain “for Morocco”. That is not accurate. The forces from Britain were bound for Algeria, for Oran and Algiers; Morocco was the objective of Patton’s force alone. Nor did they sail on the same day: the first, slow supply convoy left the Firth of Clyde on 22 October, and the fast convoy carrying the assault troops on 26 October. Linked to these preparations was the move on 29 October of the American 1st Armored Division from Northern Ireland to England.

A plan for three task forces

The decision to land in French North Africa was taken in the summer, and at the beginning of September the Americans and British agreed on three landings. The Western Task Force was to sail from the United States and land at three points on Morocco’s Atlantic coast: at Safi, at Fedala north of Casablanca, and at Mehdia, from where a road led to the airfield at Port-Lyautey (today Kenitra). The Centre Task Force, with Major General Lloyd Fredendall’s US II Corps, was to take Oran. The Eastern Task Force, made up of American and British troops, was to land at Algiers and then hand over command to General Kenneth Anderson’s British First Army, which was to advance into Tunisia. The supreme commander of the whole expedition was Lieutenant General Dwight Eisenhower, who since June had commanded US forces in Europe from London.

All three landings were to take place simultaneously, on the night of 7–8 November. The convoys therefore had to sail in a precisely calculated order: Patton’s force had the longest voyage, and from Britain the slowest ships set out first. A few days before sailing, on the night of 21–22 October, Eisenhower’s deputy, Major General Mark Clark, held secret talks near Cherchell with French officers ready to help the Allies. There was no longer time to incorporate the information he obtained on the coastal defences into the Western Task Force’s orders. It was passed to Hewitt and Patton by radio while they were at sea.

The Western Task Force leaves Virginia

Patton’s troops came from the US 3rd Infantry Division, part of the 9th Infantry Division and the 2nd Armored Division. The 3rd Division trained almost to the last on the West Coast of the United States, the other units at places such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina. The final stage was an exercise in Chesapeake Bay: a rehearsal of landing troops from the same transports that were to carry them to Africa. According to the US official history, the Western Task Force eventually numbered 33,843 men, including air personnel. Loading in a port with no experience yet of operations on such a scale was a fraught business. One transport returned from the exercises with engine trouble, and her cargo had to be transferred to another ship within thirty-five hours, while a leaking freighter carrying petrol and ammunition finally sailed alone, without escort, and joined her group only off the African coast.

The force was too large to leave a single port unobserved. It therefore sailed in sections, at different times and in apparently different directions. The submarines went first, to reconnoitre the beaches and guide the transports to them. On the afternoon of 23 October the first half of the transports left Hampton Roads with their covering warships and headed towards Bermuda, where the carrier group was already exercising. The next morning the second half sailed, with the Augusta, and set course to the north-east as if bound for Britain. On 27 October Rear Admiral Robert Giffen’s covering group, with the new battleship USS Massachusetts, which had sailed from Casco Bay in Maine, took station at the head of the formation. On 28 October the air group, with the carrier USS Ranger and three escort carriers converted from tankers, took up position behind the convoy.

For more than ten days the force steamed in radio silence, refuelling at sea and avoiding other shipping. A Portuguese and a Spanish ship encountered on the way were stopped and searched, then released. Most of the soldiers learned where they were going only on the high seas. Between 4 and 6 November the weather deteriorated sharply, and the forecasts predicted for the day of the landing a surf that might make it impossible to land on the open beaches. Hewitt backed his meteorologist’s opinion that the storm would pass quickly and did not postpone the operation. On 7 November the force split into three groups, which headed for their beaches.

The convoys from the Clyde

The troops of the Centre and Eastern Task Forces assembled in Scotland. The US 1st Infantry Division, the 168th Regiment of the 34th Infantry Division and other units practised landings on Scottish lochs and coasts, and on 17 October the whole expedition began to gather in the Firth of Clyde. Before dawn on 19 October the transports carried out a final rehearsal near Loch Linnhe and returned to the Clyde the following day. The troops were already waiting on board.

On 22 October the first convoy sailed: according to the US official history, 46 cargo ships escorted by 18 warships, carrying stores, vehicles and equipment. Being slower, it left first so that the second could catch up with it. On 26 October the troop convoy sailed, 39 transports escorted by 12 warships, with the assault units of both task forces. It was led by Rear Admiral Harold Burrough in the headquarters ship HMS Bulolo, which also carried the commanders of the Algiers landing, the American Major General Charles Ryder and the British General Vyvyan Evelegh. In the second headquarters ship, HMS Largs, sailed Commodore Thomas Troubridge and Fredendall. The troops of the Centre Task Force numbered about 37,000 Americans and 3,600 British. Most of the ships and escorts were British, but Polish and Dutch ships sailed with them too. Tankers, colliers, tugs and other auxiliary vessels had been sent ahead to Gibraltar.

The most dangerous point was the Strait of Gibraltar. The convoys were to pass through it on the nights of 5–6 and 6–7 November, having first split into sections bound for Algiers and Oran. Gibraltar was crammed with aircraft and ships, a sight watched by German agents on the Spanish side of the bay. The German command, however, expected another convoy to Malta or a landing in Libya rather than a landing in French Africa.

Luck in the Atlantic

The greatest fear was of the U-boats. More than twenty Axis submarines were believed to be operating along the route of the convoys from Britain. Yet none of them spotted the convoys. One boat sighted by an air patrol a few tens of kilometres away was forced to stay submerged for so long that the ships passed by unreported. According to many historians the convoys were saved partly by chance: from 27 October a U-boat group off the coast of West Africa, between the Canary Islands and Madeira, attacked the British merchant convoy SL 125 sailing from Freetown and sank a dozen or so of its ships (sources usually give twelve or thirteen). The pursuit drew the submarines away from the route along which the invasion convoys passed a few days later. Patton’s force, too, reached Morocco undetected.

The 1st Armored Division leaves Northern Ireland

On 29 October Major General Orlando Ward’s US 1st Armored Division moved from Northern Ireland to England. It had arrived in Northern Ireland in May 1942 aboard the Queen Mary and had spent the summer training on the moors there. Not the whole division went to England, however: part of it had already sailed for war. Its Combat Command B under Brigadier General Lunsford Oliver, prepared in Northern Ireland for amphibious tasks, formed part of the Centre Task Force and sailed with the convoys from the Clyde for Oran. The rest of the division moved to England, from where it was to follow to Africa in November and December.

On 8 November Combat Command B landed east and west of Oran, and on 10 November its tanks entered the city. By the end of November it was in Tunisia, where it clashed with the Germans. For the American armoured forces a hard schooling began, whose most painful lesson came in February 1943 with the defeats at Sidi Bou Zid and the Kasserine Pass.

Place in the war

On the night of 7–8 November 1942 all three task forces reached their objectives as planned, and the first wave, more than seventy thousand Allied troops, began landing in Morocco and Algeria. The French resisted for two to three days, most fiercely in Morocco and around Oran. Off Casablanca French warships sailed out of the harbour to meet Hewitt’s fleet and were shattered. The fighting was ended by an agreement with Admiral François Darlan, who happened to be in Algiers. The Germans responded by occupying southern France and moving troops into Tunisia, where the fighting went on until May 1943.

The sailing of the convoys from Virginia and Scotland showed what Allied logistics could achieve. Hundreds of ships, sailing from two continents on different days, were to meet at their objectives on the same night, and the enemy failed to realise in time where they were heading. The Allies later repeated the feat on an ever larger scale: in Sicily in July 1943, at Salerno, and in Normandy in June 1944. For Eisenhower, Patton, Hewitt and many of the officers who put to sea in October 1942, Operation Torch was the school of the great amphibious landings by which the United States and Britain would return to the European continent.