Posted on 07/10/2013 12:48:20 PM PDT by Kaslin
Seventy years ago this week, U.S. and British Commonwealth troops began Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. Foreshadowing D-Day 1944, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower served as overall Allied commander. Like D-Day, Allied airborne soldiers led the Husky assault by parachuting (on the night of July 9, 1943) into olive groves and rock-strewn fields along the island's southeastern shores.
On July 10, seven divisions -- three U.S., three British and the 1st Canadian Infantry Division -- launched an amphibious attack on a 100-mile long front. Despite several successful Axis air attacks on ships and a brazen Italian tank attack on U.S. positions near Gela, by midnight July 10 all seven divisions were ashore.
Putting seven divisions ashore so swiftly was an extraordinary coup. Oh, grievous errors occurred as the buildup proceeded, the most notorious being the July 11 downing of 23 U.S. transports by Allied anti-aircraft fire. The planes were ferrying paratroop reinforcements. Yet in its initial phases Husky demonstrated that the Anglo-American team had learned a great deal since the Operation Torch landings in November 1942. Planning and coordination had improved. North African combat had honed the skills of American forces.
Then came the hard slog, over Sicily's godforsaken rocks.
For the next six weeks, the Germans and a diminishing number of Italians fought brutal delaying actions. German infantry stalled the Commonwealth's east coast advances, south of the city of Messina. The Axis frustrated an American thrust in central Sicily.
The conflicting egos of the two Allied army commanders, Britain's Bernard Montgomery and America's George Patton, sorely tested Allied cooperation. Cool-headed Ike and his combined staff finessed both powerful personalities. The stubborn Montgomery continued to slam his troops against Axis positions near Mount Etna. His was the shortest route to Messina, and Messina, Sicily's route to Italy, was the prize. Messina sits on the western side of the Strait of Messina, known in classical times as Scylla and Charybdis. Capture Messina, and Sicily became an Axis POW cage.
The Germans wanted a bloody slugfest. Patton didn't. He sent mobile units toward the weakly defended northwest sector. On July 22 his troops seized the port of Palermo, as the U.S. 45th Infantry Division cut the long highway connecting Palermo and Messina. The U.S. bagged 20,000 prisoners.
Now U.S. troops pushed east toward Messina. The British kept pounding from the south. The hard slog did not end until Aug. 17. The Allies suffered 25,000 casualties (killed and wounded). The Germans lost 4,700 dead, 14,000 wounded and 5,500 captured. Italians suffered 4,300 dead, 32,000 wounded and 100,000 captured (possibly more).
The Sicily campaign placed Allied troops less than 10 miles (the strait's width) from mainland Italy.
The oh-so-close proximity of large Allied forces to Italy was enticing. And that enticement leads to the biggest historical question tagging Operation Husky: Was taking Sicily the best strategic choice, since it made an invasion of Italy inevitable? From south of Naples to the Po Valley, Italy's rugged and rocky terrain is a defender's delight and attacker's sorrow.
Winston Churchill had sold Sicily as the next logical step. Sicily was the classical route to Rome from North Africa, and knocking fascist Italy out of the war would deal Adolf Hitler's Axis a heavy political loss.
Sicily geographically dominates the central Mediterranean. Husky's advocates noted that for three millennia the island served as the stepping stone of to-and-fro commerce and war between North Africa and Europe.
American military leaders were not convinced. The decisive route to Berlin goes through France -- make the all-out effort there. Churchill also claimed Europe had a "soft underbelly." Italian and Balkan terrain is not soft. Several senior U.S. planners thought Churchill was really trying to defend British imperial interests.
Axis-controlled Sicily had served as a big aircraft carrier for attacking Allied shipping. Under Allied control, those bases would extend air cover to northern Italy and Sardinia. U.S. planners agreed that Husky made operational sense if the goal was securing air bases. But can we stop there, at the strait? Sicily's hard slog was costly. A strategic thrust up Italy's mountainous spine will be as just slow and deadly.
And indeed it was.
I recall a story from not long ago about a youngster who asked an astronaut what he must do to prepare for such a career. The astronaut replied, "learn Russian."
MacArthur was insubordinate to 3 president. Now that might sound cool, but in his case, it really was't.
MacArthur served under seven presidents. Who were the three to whom he was insubordinate?
Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman.
Hindsight is always 20-20.
How was he insubordinate to Hoover and Roosevelt?
As far as Roosevelt, I'm not even sure I know the whole story. Roosevelt let him get away with it, which doesn't make it right. Among other things, The Commander in Chief ordered him to a strategy meeting, and MacArthur just ignored him. MacArthur basically ran his own operation, without bothering to coordinate with Admiral Nimitz or anyone else. Luckily he didn't screw up things badly enough to get in Nimitz' way.
I figured you would bring up the Bonus Army. Remember, iit was the demonstrators who started the violence. Interestingly, FDR also opposed paying the veterans the bonus they were demanding, and it took years before they got their bonus.
It sounds as though MacArthur’s “insubordination” against FDR was rather minor.
However flawed MacArthur was, I’m not about to diss him. He was a hero of mine when I was a teenager and a major reason that I became a conservative.
I wish MacArthur had come home in 1944 to run for president. Among Roosevelt's opponents, he would have had the best chance to win. Had he won, Harry Truman would only be known to students of political corruption, Eisenhower would be famous only for his accomplishments in WWII, and the Republican Party's Dewey-Warren faction--the GOPe of the day--would have been out in the cold.
The US occupation of Iwo Jima saved the lives of many US fliers whose battle-damaged planes had to land there while returning from combat over Japan.
McArthur wasn't involved in either the Guadalcanal or Tarawa campaigns. Both of them were CINCPAC (Nimitz) shows.
By the way, do you believe the U.S. people would not reelect any president in war like 1944? No way. And certainly not a general who deserted the field.
LOL. Neither of those facts has the slightest to do with it. Were you ever in the military? Is it your experience you can disobey the order of a commanding officer, then say as an excuse, "But, sir, Roosevelt did this, and some other people did that." The CIC told him to stop the attack, and he started a new attack! Not even to mention it was against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.
MacArthur had little to do with the island hopping and bypassing campaign, which was largely carried out in the Central Pacific by Nimitz. And War Plan Orange, which laid out the general approach, was not authored by MacArthur.
He was an excellent military proconsul post-war.
What do you mean "deserted the field"?
I believe FDR was beatable in 1944. The people were tired of the New Deal, and the GOP had done well in 1942. Despite being a lousy candidate who ran a lousy campaign, Thomas Dewey, the GOP presidential standard bearer, did better than Willkie, Landon or Hoover and brought Wisconsin and Ohio into the Republican column for the first time since 1928. Had the GOP run an immensely popular candidate like MacArthur, it might very well have won.
You’re probably one of those guys who refers to LA’s famous MacArthur Park by its original name of Westlake Park, or Orange County’s MacArthur Blvd. as Talbert Avenue.
How so? I always thought that Germany, Italy and Japan were the losers.
Not sure that is true.
First most B-29 aircraft that landed there did so on “training” missions.
Second, even aircraft that may have ditched about that far from Japan might have parachuted out and been picked up by the Navy.
Certainly the airfields there were useless to the Japanese, as they had no meaningful amount of fuel. It is open to question as to how sure the various commanders may have been of that aspect of Japanese want.
Certainly we reelected GW Bush in 2004.
I am not sure that MacArthur wasn’t right about the 10th Corps. Certainly if the Marine division had kept on line with the 7th Army division and pushed hard, the dirt where the Chinese concentrated for their Chosin Reservoir attacks would have been controlled by the US. The Chinese would have been discovered while the X corps was attacking, with scouts out, artillery concentrations working, and caissons full of ammunition going forward.
As it was, the remnants of 7th Infantry division fought as rear guard protecting the Marines from the Chinese as the Marines retreated.
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