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17. Operation Dragoon
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There was very little opposition because the Germans had pulled back and when we were on the beach some of the lads, some of the sailors, went up and picked grapes out of the vineyards, and it was one of the easier or better operations we had. —Alwyn Thomas, HMS Bruiser The Western Naval Task Force, or main assault force for Operation Dragoon, was mounted in the Naples area and left in convoys at intervals beginning on August 9, 1944. Rear Adm. Frank J. Lowry’s flagship Duane led out Task Force 84 (Alpha Force), the first assault force, followed three days later by the LCT convoys. Three hours after Task Force 84’s departure, Rear Adm. Bertram J. Rodgers sortied in Biscayne with the sixty-three-ship Task Force 85 (Delta Force) and an LST convoy. Task Force 87 (Camel Force), the third group, with twenty -five combat loaders, a battleship, and sixteen warships under the command of Rear Adm. Spencer S. Lewis in Bayfield, left the next day followed by yet another convoy with forty-eight MT ships and ten other vessels. The last unit to leave Naples was the amphibious force flagship Catoctin, which got under way with the control force or SF-1B at noon on August 13 with a personal send-off from Prime Minister Churchill, who waved “goodbye and good luck” from a speedboat. On board Catoctin were Western Naval Task Force commander Vice Adm. H. Kent Hewitt; the Seventh Army commander Lt. Gen. Alexander “Sandy” Patch, and his staff; the VI Corps commander Maj. Gen. Lucian K. Truscott; and the commander of the French II Corps, Gen. Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. Recalling the eve of the Operation Dragoon, Hewitt CHAPTER 17 OPERATION DRAGOON THE LANDINGS IN SOUTHERN FRANCE v-Tomblin 17.qx2 6/30/04 1:20 PM Page 401 wrote, “It was all a great responsibility, the coordinating of the movements . I felt the responsibility, naturally. But . . . I had a very fine staff on whom I could rely. I didn’t worry. I mean that I had the attitude— we’d done our best and I hope that everything will be all right.”1 General Truscott’s aide remembers that the voyage to southern France was blessed with calm seas but that the heat below decks was oppressive. On August 14 he wrote, “In late evening begin to pass through LCIs. Some 1001 ships making this invasion. Largest in history. Jitters cooling off a little.” Although he was not technically correct on its size, with almost 900 ships and more landing craft the Dragoon force was the largest armada yet to sail for an Allied operation in the Mediterranean . With so many Allied convoys converging on the south coast of France, surprise was out of the question. “Our fleet of LCIs had moved up the Mediterranean in four columns abeam; there seemed little chance of keeping our movements unobserved from anybody anymore,” Lt. Cdr. Max Miller wrote. “The people of Salerno certainly had known we were gone, and the people along the island shores certainly must have seen us as we moved by.”2 Indeed, as early as August 12, Adm. Theodor Krancke, the German admiral, south coast of France, knew the score. “The assembly of ships in Ajaccio and in the Bay of Propriano confirms the assumption of a landing in southern France in the near future,” Krancke wrote. Although he predicted the invasion would come in the early hours of the fifteenth, the admiral had no illusions about the Germans’ ability to defend the French coast. They had 230,000 troops in southern France but had stationed only 30,000 near the coast because the German High Command had decided not to try to defeat the Allies on the beaches but to wait for the exact location of the landings and then counterattack with mobile groups positioned in the rear. The troops positioned along the coast may not have been numerous but were, according to Gen. Friedrich Wiese of Germany’s XIX Army, “well-disciplined and in good order.” They were aided by the rugged terrain of the Riviera where about 450 heavy and 1,200 light antiaircraft guns had been placed in recent months.3 ALPHA FORCE The mission of Rear Adm. Frank J. Lowry’s Task Force 84, or Alpha Force, was to land the U.S. Third Infantry Division on two beaches about six miles apart, Alpha Red at Cavalaire and Alpha Yellow Beach at Pampelonne...