Task Force Butler:: A Case Study In The Employment Of An Ad Hoc Unit In Combat Operations, During Operation Dragoon, 1-30 August 1944

By Major Michael J. Volpe

On 15 August 1944, an Allied army launched a second amphibious landing against the coast of southern France. The Allies, having shattered German defenses around the beachhead, decided to exploit the chaos in the enemy camp. On 17 August 1944, Major General (MG) Lucian K. Truscott Jr., with no mobile organic strike force assigned to his VI Corps, ordered the assembly of and attack by an ad hoc collection of units roughly equivalent to an armored brigade. This provisional armored group (Task Force (TF) Butler) experienced remarkable success despite a dearth of planning, no rehearsals, and no history of working together in either training or combat. This case study examines the success of TF Butler from the perspectives of doctrinal development in the United States (U.S.) Army, the unit’s unique task organization, and the leadership’s employment of the unit in combat. The use of ad hoc formations to meet unforeseen situations was not unique to World War II; American units currently serving in the Middle East are regularly assigned units they have no habitual relations with to conduct combat operations. This case study may prove useful in preparing contemporary military leaders for the types of challenges they will face conducting operations in the contemporary operational environment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lucknow Books
• Release date: Nov 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781786256553

Major Michael J. Volpe

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Text originally published in 2007 under the same title.

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TASK FORCE BUTLER: A CASE STUDY IN THE EMPLOYMENT OF AN AD HOC UNIT IN COMBAT OPERATIONS, DURING OPERATION DRAGOON, 1-30 AUGUST 1944

BY

MAJ MICHAEL J. VOLPE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

ABSTRACT 5

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 6

ACRONYMS 7

ILLUSTRATIONS 8

TABLES 9

CHAPTER 1—INTRODUCTION 10

Prelude to the Second D-Day 10

Operation ANVIL: Biography of an Operation that Almost Wasn’t 12

An Armor Task Force for Major General Truscott 13

CHAPTER 2—DOCTRINE 16

Introduction 16

Combined Arms Warfare 101 17

The Doctrinal Pyramid 18

The Blending of the Arms 24

The Doctrine of Command 26

Conclusion 28

CHAPTER 3—TASK ORGANIZATION 30

Introduction 30

The Combat Command 33

Anatomy of a Combat Command 34

Combat Command Sudre—The Preferred Solution 35

Task Force Butler—Task Organization 37

Comparing Apples and Oranges (or Tanks and Armored Cars) 40

Conclusion 46

CHAPTER 4—LEADERSHIP 48

Introduction 48

18 August 1944 49

Brigadier General Butler’s Wild Ride 50

The Exercise of Command Within the Task Force 53

Employment of Forces 58

Task Organization the Move 69

Conclusion 72

CHAPTER 5—CONCLUSION 73

The End Results 73

Playing With an All-Star Team 74

What Was Once Uncommon 77

BIBLIOGRAPHY 79

Books 79

Periodicals 82

Government Documents 83

Other Sources 85

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 86

ABSTRACT

On 15 August 1944, an Allied army launched a second amphibious landing against the coast of southern France. The Allies, having shattered German defenses around the beachhead, decided to exploit the chaos in the enemy camp. On 17 August 1944, Major General (MG) Lucian K. Truscott Jr., with no mobile organic strike force assigned to his VI Corps, ordered the assembly of and attack by an ad hoc collection of units roughly equivalent to an armored brigade. This provisional armored group (Task Force (TF) Butler) experienced remarkable success despite a dearth of planning, no rehearsals, and no history of working together in either training or combat. This case study examines the success of TF Butler from the perspectives of doctrinal development in the United States (US) Army, the unit’s unique task organization, and the leadership’s employment of the unit in combat. The use of ad hoc formations to meet unforeseen situations was not unique to World War II; American units currently serving in the Middle East are regularly assigned units they have no habitual relations with to conduct combat operations. This case study may prove useful in preparing contemporary military leaders for the types of challenges they will face conducting operations in the contemporary operational environment.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, I would like to thank my parents, without whom I would never have progressed as far as I have in life. Next, I wish to thank the members of my Committee without whose patience and assistance the project would not have been possible. Your ability to keep me on track and on focus was at times the only thing that kept me pressing forward.

I would like to thank the staff of the Texas Military Forces Museum, at Camp Mabry, in Austin, Texas. Special thanks go to Sergeant First Class (SFC) Diane Tominaga. The time and effort spent finding, photocopying, and sending both primary and secondary source material to me will not be forgotten.

Finally, I would like to extend one last note of thanks to staff of the Combined Arms Research Library (CARL) for their assistance in locating primary sources and doctrinal publications. Without your assistance this thesis may not have been possible.

ACRONYMS

BCS—British Chiefs of Staff

BG—Brigadier General

CC—Combat Command

FM—Field Manuel

JCS—Joint Chiefs of Staff

LTG—Lieutenant General

MG—Major General

MTO—Mediterranean Theater of Operations

TF—Task Force

US—United States

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1. Vertical Linkage Between Field Manual 100-5 and Doctrinal Texts of Various Arms

Figure 2. The Doctrinal Pyramid

Figure 3. Vertical Nesting of United States Army Doctrinal Publications

Figure 4. Typical Combat Command Task Organization

Figure 5. Combat Command Sudre Task Organization

Figure 6. Task Force Butler Task Organization

Figure 7. Task Force Butler Advance to Reiz, 18 August 1944

Figure 8. Task Force Butler Advance to Sisterone, 19 August 1944

Figure 9. Task Force Butler Advance to Aspres-sur-Beuch and Gap, 20 August 1944

Figure 10. Task Force Butler Employment of Units in the Defense, as of 23 August 1944

Figure 11. Blocking Positions at Col de la Croix Haute

TABLES

Table 1. Organic Equipment of Comparable Combat Formations

CHAPTER 1—INTRODUCTION

Few persons will understand me, but I write for the connoisseurs, trusting that they will not be offended by the confidence of my opinions. They should correct them; that is the fruit I expect from my work.{1}—Field Marshal Maurice Comte de Saxe, My Reveries, 1732, translated by Phillips, 1940

Prelude to the Second D-Day

In the early morning hours of 6 June 1944, Anglo-American Forces assaulted the beaches at Normandy. The attack, code-named Operation OVERLORD, created the long awaited third front against Nazi Germany. Despite initial success in establishing a shallow beachhead, Allied forces made little headway in the coming weeks. Almost every subsequent operation failed to achieve its initial mission objectives. During the seven weeks following the landings, offensive progress was more often measured in yards than in miles gained. Allied failures were brought upon by a combination of factors including the skill of the defenders, the inexperience of most Allied divisions, the difficulty of the terrain, and logistical limitations imposed by the existing port infrastructure. The rapid landing followed by swift exploitation inland that had characterized most Allied amphibious landings (Operations TORCH, HUSKY, and AVALANCHE) had eluded the Allies at Normandy.

A second assault had also been planned for southern France. Operation ANVIL (later renamed DRAGOON) was planned as a supporting operation to the Allied main effort in Normandy.{2} Its purpose was twofold: (1) to force the German forces in France to fight in two directions, and (2) to give Allied forces access to the vital port facilities at Marseilles and Toulon. Allied planners intended this operation to occur subsequent to OVERLORD; but the timing of the operation in relation to OVERLORD remained undetermined.{3} In late March 1944, Allied leaders selected 10 July 1944, as the date for the assault on southern France; however, a number of external factors conspired to further delay ANVIL.{4} Finally, on 2 July 1944, despite numerous delays and cancellations, 15 August 1944 was pinpointed as date of the amphibious assault.{5}

The situation facing the Allies at this time was still somewhat grim. The Allies had been facing stiff German resistance for almost a month and had yet to achieve some of OVERLORD’s initial operational objectives (Caen and St. Lo). The German Army confronted the slowly expanding Allied beachhead by reinforcing its forces in Normandy with units drawn from southern France and Germany.{6} Operation ANVIL was six weeks away, and German resistance in and around Normandy showed no signs of collapse. The Allies could not wait for ANVIL to fulfill its intended purpose to act.

Allied leaders needed to prevent the German Army from massing a large force against the Allied beachhead in Normandy. The Allies believed that it was necessary to keep continuous pressure on the German Army to both maintain the initiative and to prevent the massing of a force capable of driving the Allies back into the sea. Continuous offensive operations were planned to chew-up German units and force them to employ forces as they arrived in Normandy to replace divisions that had been eroded by Allied offensive operations. Allied leaders anticipated that unremitting attacks might eventually produce a weakness that could be exploited and allow a breakout from Normandy.

To achieve the desired breakout and restore mobility to the front the Allied Command planned several major offensives. A series of British attacks were conducted along the Allied eastern flank to draw German panzer divisions away from a selected breakout site in the west. Second, a planned breakout would strike the weakened Germany western flank, penetrate their defenses, and launch an exploitation force to strike deep into German held territory. It was hoped that these operations would restore mobility to combat operations in northern France. The first of these offensives commenced in mid-June 1944.

Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery mounted several armor heavy offensives in the British and Canadian sectors designed to draw German Panzer Divisions east. The two most important offensives, Operation EPSOM (25 June to 1 July 1944) and Operation GOODWOOD (18 to 21 July 1944), were intended to be rapid eastern thrusts aimed at threatening the vital crossroads at Caen and Falaise respectively.{7} Though the British never achieved their tactical goals, their repeated armored thrusts did cause the German Army to shift enough combat power (namely tanks) to set the conditions for a successful American breakthrough in