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The French fought with great courage . . . and it was very distasteful to us to have to fire, but we couldn’t let them get at the transports. —Officer on HMS Aurora While the Americans were landing along the coast of French Morocco, Allied troops were coming ashore inside the Mediterranean at Oran and Algiers. The capture of Oran and its naval base at Mers el-Kébir was the mission of the Center Naval Task Force, led by Commodore Thomas Troubridge RN, which transported Maj. Gen. Lloyd Fredendall’s Center Task Force to beaches on either side of Oran. The Center Task Force was composed of the First U.S. Infantry Division, units of the First Armored Division, and a company of the First U.S. Ranger Battalion . The Americans planned to seize Oran’s port facilities in a commando -type raid then advance on the city in a pincer movement assisted by an airborne assault coordinated with a American armored column. To the east of Oran, Rear Adm. Sir Harold M. Burrough’s Eastern Naval Task Force was to land forty-five thousand British and ten thousand U.S. troops in three sectors on either side of the city of Algiers. These forces were to converge on the city, where a mixed British-American commando force would already have come ashore from two destroyers to secure dock facilities.1 The Center and Eastern Naval Task Forces sailed from Loch Ewe and Tail of the Clyde, Scotland, in two convoys. KMS-1, the slow convoy , sailed first on October 22, followed four days later by KMF-1, the fast convoy. Sailing with a convoy that included almost two dozen LSIs (infantry landing ships), ten personnel ships, two combat loaders, an attack transport, and the headquarters ship HMS Largs, war corresponCHAPTER 3 OPERATION TORCH THE MEDITERRANEAN LANDINGS h-Tomblin 03.qx2 7/2/04 1:26 PM Page 55 dent Drew Middleton wrote, “Patrolling the perimeter of the convoys were destroyers of the British escort. Tiny out there on the gray waters, but loaded with depth charges, they searched for U-boats every one expected.”2 Many of the ships, including the LSIs and Admiral Burrough’s flagship , HMS Bulolo, newly converted to a headquarters ship, were participating in their first combat operation. The LSI fast transports, sometimes referred to as Glen ships, were making their debut. Two dozen of the new ships, which had been modified to carry eighty-seven officers and a thousand troops each in addition to their regular crew, formed the backbone of the Eastern Naval Task Force.3 The passage of the KMF-1 and KMS-1 convoys to Gibraltar was uneventful. “The route took the convoy out of range of German bombers,” a war correspondent noted. “Seasickness was a far greater worry to the troops than enemy attack. For two days fairly rough weather made many of them extremely unhappy.” Once the weather calmed, “their spirits rose. The ship was filled with snatches of song and heated arguments over what would happen as a result of the landings , as well as the inevitable baseball and boxing. A British seaman on board taught the troops how to make rings out of British two-shilling pieces. Soon the ship resounded with hammering of earnest amateur jewelers.” On November 5 the ships destined for Oran from both KMF-1 and KMS-1 split off from the main convoy. The Eastern and Center naval task forces then proceeded independently through the Strait of Gibraltar , the former bound for landings near Algiers and the latter for an assault on Oran.4 November 7 (D-day Minus One) dawned as bright and sunny as a Mediterranean travel poster. Although no Axis aircraft had been sighted shadowing the Algiers-bound convoy, at about 0545 Capt. Campbell D. Edgar, commander of Transport Division 11, wrote, “a plane glided in from the port quarter of the U.S.S. Thomas Stone dropping an aerial torpedo which hit her aft, likewise launching an aerial torpedo which missed the U.S.S. Samuel Chase by about fifty yards.” The torpedo slammed into Stone’s port side aft, blowing off the rudder and throwing Lieutenant (j.g.) E.J.W. Nelson to the deck of the steering engine room, which went dark. Although he was stunned, Nelson’s first thoughts were of the four men on duty with him, so he called out, “Is anyone hurt?” A voice cried out for help, and Nelson painfully clawed his...

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