Gators of Neptune: Naval Amphibious Planning for the Normandy Invasion

By Christopher D Yung

A research analyst for the Center for Naval Analyses offers a rare historical account of the Royal and U.S. Navies' involvement in one of the greatest amphibious assaults of modern history. It is a story of cooperation and, at times, discord, between the two navies as they planned the naval portion of the Allied invasion of Normandy. With the evolution of amphibious warfare as a backdrop, the book has sufficient technical detail to satisfy the modern day practitioner of amphibious warfare, yet is written in a style that makes it accessible to the general public. Thoroughly researched at the U.S. National Archives and the Naval Historical Center, the book takes the reader from the initial plans created by the Anglo-American Allies in 1942, through the first draft of Operation Overlord, to the final naval plan set down in 1944. It then presents a detailed description of the invasion itself. Christopher Yung covers every obstacle confronted by the naval planners, from the shifting tides of the English Channel to overcoming the European coastal defenses and dealing with the submarine threat. Despite his attention to historical detail, he brings to life the personalities of those who brought Operation Neptune from concept to reality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Sep 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781612515182

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CHRISTOPHER D. YUNG

Naval Institute Press

Annapolis, Maryland

The latest edition of this work has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of The United States Naval Academy Class of 1945.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

© 2006 by Christopher D. Yung

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-61251-518-2 (eBook)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Yung, Christopher D.

Gators of Neptune : naval amphibious planning for the Normandy invasion / Christopher D. Yung.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Operation Overlord. 2. Operation Neptune. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Amphibious operations. I. Title.

D756.5.N6Y69 2006

940.54’21421—dc22

2005037955

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

131211109876987654321

First printing

CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

LIST OF ACRONYMS AND GLOSSARY

1THE COMMANDERS

2NEPTUNE PLANNING IN DOCTRINAL CONTEXT

3FOUNDATION OF INVASION: FROM ROUNDUP TO THE OVERLORD OUTLINE PLAN

4CROSS-ATLANTIC GAMES OF BALL

5HARD CHOICES

6NEPTUNE PLANS

7FROM DUCK TO FABIUS AND THE TRAGEDY OF SLAPTON SANDS

8EXECUTION

9NEPTUNE: ITS LESSONS AND LEGACIES

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

TABLES

4.1.ASSAULT FORCE SHIPPING AND LANDING CRAFT, OPERATION NEPTUNE

4.2.21ST ARMY GROUP ASSESSMENT OF DISTRIBUTION OF ENEMY FIREPOWER

4.3.OPERATION NEPTUNE, BOMBARDMENT FORCE

5.1.AEAF ALLOCATION OF TACTICAL AIRCRAFT, NEPTUNE

8.1.EFFECT OF JUNE STORM ON ALLIED BUILDUP

PREFACE

In 1999 the halls of the Carrier Group Four building in Norfolk, Virginia, were decorated with paintings of the U.S. Navy at Normandy. This caught my attention since I was at CARGRU Four representing the Commander, Amphibious Group Two, as his Center for Naval Analyses ¹ representative. Back in the late 1990s CARGRU 4 was one of a few commands responsible for the evaluation of the readiness of carrier battle group staffs. They were also at the center of an effort by the U.S. Navy to identify the tactical tasks that carrier groups and amphibious ready groups were responsible for. While waiting to support that effort I walked the halls of CARGRU 4 admiring the artwork, which depicted one of the largest amphibious assaults of the Second World War. In looking at these paintings—landing craft heading toward Omaha Beach, infantry climbing down nets off an attack transport, naval personnel watching the bombardment of the beaches of France—it struck me that the amount of planning and thinking that went into that operation must have been enormous. My then-limited experience with the planning of amphibious operations informed me that planning for Marine Expeditionary Brigade and Marine Expeditionary Unit landings, the bread and butter of the modern-day U.S. Navy’s amphibious forces, took up a good deal of time and effort on the staff’s part, and that was only for the landing of a reinforced regiment or a reinforced battalion. How much more time and effort would it have taken to plan and execute an amphibious landing involving multiple U.S. and British Army Corps?

I decided to look into what had been written on the subject of naval amphibious planning for the Normandy invasion. As it turned out, that wasn’t much. A review of the books that have been written on the 1944 Normandy invasion showed me that the majority, rightfully, focus on the armies rushing ashore on the beaches of France. After all, these were the same troops who fought their way out of France and brought about the fall of Hitler’s Third Reich. A significant number of other books on the Normandy invasion detail the activities of some of the major figures of that campaign—most notably Eisenhower, Montgomery, and Bradley, the decision makers whose vision eventually made the invasion of northern Europe a reality. A smaller number of accounts detail the activities of the other services—the Allied air forces and navies—in support of the Overlord operation. However, many of these accounts focus on D-day itself rather than the planning effort.

Of the books that do attempt to cover the planning of the Allied navies for Overlord, these usually focus on a specific aspect of the planning. Some cover the planning and execution of the movement of the artificial harbors to the coast of France. Some go into detail on the mine-sweeping operation that permitted the amphibious force to cross the Channel. Some focus on the contributions of a single individual—in most instances the Allied naval commander, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay. In some instances, the depiction may cover a group of planners but focuses either on the British or the American side of the story and not on the interplay between the two. Consequently, the level of effort of the two navies doing the planning is insufficiently treated. Bernard Fergusson’s Watery Maze, for example, goes into great detail about the British effort to plan their amphibious assaults but only lightly covers the contributions the Americans made to the dialogue. Similarly, Samuel Eliot Morison spends almost all his time describing the American effort toward making Operation Neptune a reality and largely ignores the British efforts. In other instances, especially the early histories of Navy planning for Operation Neptune, the cooperation between the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy is discussed, but those histories downplay the tensions that existed between the two sides, and the reader is given a watered-down version of what actually transpired.

Over time I came to the conclusion that a book on naval amphibious planning for Operation Neptune was worth the massive undertaking required to do it right. It would have to address the technical and doctrinal issues that shaped the planners’ understanding of what could and could not be done in an amphibious assault. It would have to delve into some of the early planning the British had undertaken in order to return to the Continent after their defeat in 1940. It would have to accurately portray the personalities involved, show the prejudices and leadership styles that these naval officers displayed, and demonstrate what conflicts and disagreements emerged among these individuals—for it was inevitable that in undertaking such an important task the participants would disagree or at least feel strongly about how to go about accomplishing their mission. The book would have to weave together the naval planning considerations with those considerations and concerns confronting the Army and air forces, and show how differences of opinion were eventually worked out. The book would have to be technically sound, addressing the issues that the Gators, or sailors of the amphibious navy, would be concerned with, while at the same time readable for everyone else.

A Comment on the Title of the Book

The term Gator is currently used to designate members of the U.S. Navy surface warfare community who have elected to specialize in amphibious operations. However, in the Second World War the officers and sailors who took part in amphibious operations received no such designation. They were all considered surface warfare officers or sailors who just happened to be involved in this new type of naval warfare. Still, I wanted the title of this book to capture the idea that these individuals in the Royal and United States navies had expertise in a form of naval warfare and a perspective on joint warfare that distinguished them from their brethren in the submarine forces, the cruiser-destroyer navy, or the then-emerging field of naval aviation. As anachronistic as it is for a book about the amphibious navy of the Second World War to use a term that was not invented until after that war, the term that best captures that spirit is the modern term for the amphibious warrior—the Gator. And so, after much discussion with the editors at the Naval Institute Press, I elected to go with the title Gators of Neptune.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Throughout the process of developing the idea of the book, the U.S. Naval Institute Press shared my interest in the topic and the editorial staff encouraged me in the research and writing of the book. I can say without exaggeration that without the assistance of Paul Wilderson and Eric Mills, my editors at the Naval Institute Press, this book would not have been published. Their steadfast support for the project and their timely advice helped bring the manuscript from its initial vision to reality. The same goes for the support provided to me by the photographic archives branch of the Press. The archivists found the majority of the photographs featured in this book, and they found them in record time.

A number of reviewers read the original outlines for the book and early draft chapters of the manuscript. Two of these reviewers are unknown to me, so I cannot thank them by name; however, their advice and recommendations on primary and secondary source materials and the general direction of the research are clearly evident in the content of this book. Other reviewers are known to me. I thank Roger Cirillo of the Institute of Land Warfare of the Association of the United States Army, who gave me invaluable comments on the planning of Overlord as well as the doctrinal issues being wrestled with throughout the Second World War. He pointed the way to the vast array of historical material both primary and secondary that I needed to consult. Much of the improvement of the manuscript from its original draft to its second version can be directly attributed to Roger’s numerous invaluable suggestions of source materials and the ongoing dialogue I developed with him over the course of a year. Hank Donnelly, my colleague at the Center for Naval Analyses and a friend for more than twenty years, also provided invaluable input on the readability of the manuscript. I cannot thank Hank enough for the time he took to review what I’d written despite a very busy schedule and a family move from the Boston area to Washington, D.C. Finally, Anne R. Gibbons, my copy editor, did such a superb job cleaning up my manuscript and making it more readable that the clarity of the book’s prose improved tenfold. Any errors in this book are solely my responsibility.

An army of researchers whose expertise I relied on helped me in the research of this book. At the National Archives and the Naval Historical Center Sandy Smith, Mitch Yockelson, Mike Walker, Patrick Osbourne, and Tim Meninger all were invaluable in their advice on where to find essential primary source material. The staff of the library of the Joint Forces Staff College were also of great help in helping me identify and locate primary source materials resident at its library, specifically the Allied plans for Operation Neptune. Library staff in Norfolk, Chesapeake, and Virginia Beach were also very helpful in getting me much of the secondary source material.

The publication of Gators of Neptune would not have been possible without the love and support of my family. My parents’ support in whatever endeavor I decided to pursue has always been a blessing for me and continued to be so throughout my involvement in this project. Numerous friends lent their encouragement and support both here in Virginia Beach and elsewhere. My loving wife, Teresa, put up with my day and weekend trips to Washington, D.C., to spend hours at the National Archives and she accepted the hours between 9 P.M. and 2 A.M. as writing time and an inevitable cost of allowing her husband to chase his vision. Intent on spending more time with my sons, Alex and Ian, I was motivated to finish the book as quickly as possible. My two boys continue to serve as my inspiration. My in-laws were always ready to lend a hand and always had a couch available at their house near Washington, D.C., when I took the occasional trip to look through the archives. My thanks specifically go to my father-in-law, Lionel Woody Miller, who, like many members of the greatest generation, answered the call to serve in the military. The world is what it is today and we have the lives we have now because of that group of extraordinary young men and women. This book is dedicated to him and all who served in the naval service during the Second World War.

ACRONYMS AND GLOSSARY

The British Isles and selected cities and ports involved in the Normandy landings.

The British Isles and selected cities and ports involved in the Normandy landings.

Christopher Robinson

Normandy assault landing areas and associated towns and cities.

Normandy assault landing areas and associated towns and cities.

Christopher Robinson

1THE COMMANDERS

Enter Allied Naval Commander, Expeditionary Force

In October 1943 Admiral Bertram Home Ramsay entered Norfolk House in St. James Square, the London home of the Dukes of Norfolk, to assume his role as the Allied Naval Commander, Expeditionary Forces. ¹ Norfolk House had been the center of planning activity since May 1942 when the Allies were engaged in the initial military planning for a return to the Continent. Ramsay had departed for England from the Mediterranean in the summer of 1943, where he had commanded the British Eastern Naval Task Force. ² Now in October he was one of three Allied Expeditionary Force Commanders appointed to continue planning the Allied Navy’s role in Operation Neptune—the amphibious portion of Operation Overlord. His superior, the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces, had not yet been appointed, but a Chief of Staff and the nucleus of a staff that would eventually become the core of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force had been in place in early 1943 and was well along in the military planning for the cross-Channel invasion.

The stakes could not have been higher for the Allies. A successful return to the Continent meant the first step toward reversing the Allied defeats of 1940, as well as putting liberal democracies back in place on the European Continent and defeating Nazi Germany. Failure meant absolute catastrophe for the Allied war effort. Germany would hold onto its 1940 conquests. England would still be under threat by a hostile and dangerous regime just across the English Channel and might, in the end, have to resort to a negotiated peace. Finally, failure meant that America would not be able to turn its full attention to the Pacific where it was still waging a brutal war against Japan.

Ramsay was no stranger to high stakes or to the complexities of amphibious operations. He had been responsible for the planning and organizing of Operation Dynamo—the British Expeditionary Force evacuation from Dunkirk. He had planned the British part of Operation Torch (the Allied invasion of North Africa), and he had planned and commanded the Eastern (British) Naval Task Force for Operation Husky (the Allied invasion of Sicily).³

Ramsay’s extensive experience in amphibious operations would serve him well in planning Neptune. Although the invasion site had already been selected—the combined Commanders (of which Ramsay had been counted a member) along with the Chief of Staff, Supreme Allied Commander’s staff had done a good amount of preliminary planning—ANCXF would still have to address a number of unanswered operational questions.

For example, the Germans had planted many mines in the English Channel, which the naval force would have to either remove or render ineffective prior to the landing. At the same time, the Allies would need to take measures to neutralize the threat from enemy submarines, aircraft, surface ships and E-boats. Immediately prior to and during the actual landing on the shores of France, the ground troops would require adequate naval gunfire support. Finally, the Allies still needed to set H-hour—the precise hour of the day for the landing.

Beyond Ramsay’s direct experience in planning expeditionary operations, his character and personal traits made him the ideal choice to lead the naval planning effort. Rear Admiral Philip Vian, one of his subordinates, described him as a planner born; his meticulous attention to detail at Dunkirk, North Africa, and Sicily bore out this assessment.⁴ Ramsay’s well-known reputation as a strict disciplinarian characterized his career as a naval officer, but his preoccupation with the belief that all tasks no matter how minute should be done properly would serve as a solid foundation for his and his staff’s planning of one of the most complicated and detail-oriented military operations of that or any war.⁵ Interestingly, the numerous biographies that have covered his life have also described him as having the ability to get the big picture in the midst of those details.⁶ For the Sicily operation he was able to see beyond the specific needs of the fleet, and consequently he sided with Montgomery (who had serious concerns about the existing plan for Husky from the Army’s point of view) to revise the invasion plan. Similarly, he was able to take the intricate details of the subordinate operations making up a major amphibious operation like Torch and Husky and weave them together to produce a coherent plan in conformity with the other services.

Additionally, the job of Allied Commanders in Chief—ground, air force, and naval—ideally required them to occasionally stand up to their superiors, who were coming under extreme political pressure from the British Chiefs of Staff, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Prime Minister, and the President of the United States. Ramsay had this quality in abundance. Because the invasion was to be launched from the British Isles and involved many geographically dispersed naval bases and organizations, the job required an intimate and widespread knowledge of Royal Navy operations. Ramsay’s career, which was wide ranging and diverse, suggested that he also possessed these qualifications.⁷

Another important part of Ramsay’s background was his personal life. It is clear from his biographies, his own personal diary, and the letters he wrote to his wife that his family was a central part of Ramsay’s being. One of his biographers indicated that the letters he exchanged with his wife doubtless reinforced his already keen sense of what the war was being fought for, and it is very clear that he longed for the brief periods that he could spend at home.⁸

Perhaps most importantly, Admiral Ramsay had something to prove, either to his peers or to the Admiralty. Ramsay had spent most of his war service on the retired list and of the ten years that he served as an Admiral, he spent only one of them on the Active List. Most of this can be attributed to a run of bad luck.⁹ In 1935, having just attained the rank of Rear Admiral, Ramsay had a major disagreement with then-CINC, Home Fleet, Admiral Sir Roger Backhouse. A friend and former shipmate as a junior officer, Backhouse, like Admiral Lord Nelson, followed the ancient Royal Navy tradition of delegating little authority and managing the Commander’s job almost entirely on his own. He relied very little on the Chief of Staff or the staff as a whole. Ramsay objected to Backhouse’s organization of the command and he requested to be relieved and given a different assignment. Backhouse accepted Ramsay’s resignation and informed the First Sea Lord that Ramsay should not be penalized for the break. Instead, Ramsay found himself placed on the retired list owing to the absence of any flag positions for an officer on the active duty list.¹⁰ When Admiral Backhouse assumed the post of First Sea Lord, Ramsay was recalled and given the post of Vice Admiral, Dover, during the Munich crisis. Nonetheless, he was still kept on the retired list, and in the meantime four years of comparative inactivity had elapsed. In the meantime, Ramsay’s peers had passed him and were assuming posts of great importance such as command of one of the Home Fleets or positions high up in the Admiralty. Despite doing an outstanding job during Operation Dynamo, Ramsay was not given the top post for Operation Torch or any of the subsequent Mediterranean operations. That honor went to Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham. Not until Dunkirk and Ramsay’s role in pulling the British Expeditionary Force off the Continent did he find himself emerging from obscurity.

Ramsay Gets Started

First on Ramsay’s long list of tasks was to get his staff organized. He selected Rear Admiral George Creasy as his Chief of Staff. Admirals Creasy and Ramsay had known each other from previous posts. Creasy had commanded a flotilla of destroyers operating out of Dover while Ramsay was Vice Admiral there.¹¹ Historians have described Creasy as unflappable even when taking on the apparently insurmountable problems confronting the Royal Navy during the long and frustrating anti-U-boat campaign in the North Atlantic in the early part of the war. He also shared Ramsay’s characterization as detail oriented, and he was thorough in thinking through every facet of a problem when he held the post of the Admiralty’s Director of Antisubmarine Warfare.¹²

Ramsay increased the size of the X-staff, the small nucleus of British and American naval officers supporting the COSSAC staff with naval expertise for the planning effort. An early history of Neptune planning records that Ramsay created an American section for the ANCXF staff.¹³ However, Ramsay’s post-Overlord report specifically states that in the fall of 1943 there was a shortage of American naval officers who could be specifically slotted for positions on the ANCXF staff. Ramsay did attempt to create an American section with Rear Admiral Kirk and his staff as part of it.¹⁴ According to Rear Admiral Kirk’s account of the U.S. Navy’s participation in Neptune planning at the end of 1943, Ramsay’s efforts flew in the face of Kirk’s vision of his role during Neptune.¹⁵ Ramsay appropriated the American naval liaison officer to the COSSAC staff as his conduit to the American Naval planners.¹⁶

This does not mean the ANCXF staff’s role at the end of 1943 was confined to organizing itself. Ramsay had the important responsibility of selecting the Assault Force Commanders who would command the Royal Navy’s forces who in turn would land the Allied ground forces in France. By the end of the year, he had selected Rear Admiral Philip Vian as the Commander, Force Juno, and Rear Admiral Arthur Talbot as Commander, Force Sword. His selection of the remaining British Assault Force Commanders would come at the beginning of the New Year. Furthermore, by the end of 1943 Ramsay’s staff was hard at work arranging for the security, supply, and provision of other services for the large number of expected British naval forces stationed at various ports in England.¹⁷

Perhaps most importantly, in this time period, the ANCXF staff had to sort out command relations and the division of labor between itself and the various Royal Navy commands supporting the cross-Channel operation. Ramsay wrote of his thinking on this matter at the time:

It was clear that whilst I was charged with the preparation of the naval plan and with the formation and training of the naval assault forces, and later with the chief naval command of the operation, the executive implementation of the plan must very largely remain in the hands of the Home commanders-in-chief.

From the very outset it was my policy to make them my agents for this operation and to employ existing organizations, where these existed, rather than to institute new ones.¹⁸

After the success of Overlord, it is easy to forget that the approach Ramsay put in place for the command and control of some of the Allied naval forces could have easily been unworkable. Ramsay was still junior to most of the Commanders in Chief that he sought to deputize. Since the Home Commands were not formally in the chain of command of the still-unnamed Supreme Commander and by extension ANCXF, these CINCs could have, at any point, refused to do what Ramsay asked of them. In short, the command and control arrangement set up by ANCXF to manage the execution of the Assault Forces from the Home commands was one based on a handshake and not on a formal chain of command. Certain aspects of this command and control arrangement posed some complications for effective and flexible defense of the amphibious Task Forces, but in general the fact that the arrangements between Ramsay and the Home CINCs worked out, remains one of the most extraordinary aspects of Operation Neptune.

In some instances, Ramsay learned that he had to find creative ways to make use of new organizations to support the operation. Two of these joint organizations, buildup control (BUCO) and turn round control (TURCO), are good examples. BUCO’s purpose was to support the Army’s buildup requirements on the beach with all available shipping (both civilian and military). Thus, BUCO had to match the requirements and timetables of the ground forces with the scheduling of ships of all kinds.¹⁹ TURCO scheduled and coordinated the movement of ships between ports and coordinated the availability of berthing spaces with needed cargo.²⁰ This ensured the most rapid turnaround time of the ships shuttling back and forth between English ports and France. In addition to these new organizations, the Allies created the Combined Operations Repair Organization and Combined Operations Tug Control. The former coordinated and ensured the rapid repair of ships and landing craft damaged in the assault.²¹ The latter coordinated the vast fleet of tugs needed to support the many warships and merchantmen involved in Operation Neptune. Ramsay and his staff placed these new organizations with all of the Home Commands. This ensured that normal Royal Navy port operations worked hand in glove with new organizations that had specific missions supporting Neptune.

The ANCXF staff also found itself involved in bureaucratic wrangling about the design and implementation of some experimental aspects of Operation Neptune. One of these, the Mulberry, was a gigantic artificial port that was to be towed from England and planted off the beaches of France until a sizable port had been captured by the Allies. Another was a pipeline extending under the ocean from the Isle of Wight to the shores of France; it was to supply petroleum to the Allied invasion force in France. These experiments had been designed by the Combined Operations Command and authorized by the Prime Minister for use in a cross-Channel attack.²² In December 1943 Ramsay had to weigh in on a dispute between the Royal Navy and the British Army over who had responsibility for designing and providing the Mulberries.²³ Ramsay’s view was that the Army determined where they wanted the harbors, while the Navy designed and provided them. It took numerous meetings convened by the COSSAC staff and a final decision by COSSAC supporting the Royal Navy position in January 1944 to resolve the matter.²⁴

Commander Task Force 122

Rear Admiral Alan Goodrich Kirk, then Commander, Amphibious Forces Atlantic Fleet, found himself on October 2, 1943, addressing more than seven hundred U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Army officers and enlisted personnel on the lessons learned from Operation Husky.²⁵ The location of the brief was the headquarters of the CINCPAC, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The Tarawa operation was in sight, so the CINCPAC staff was interested in hearing what Kirk, who just recently had been one of the Assault Force Commanders in the Sicily operation, had to say.²⁶ Also in attendance at the meeting were the staffs of the 5th Amphibious Force, the Central Pacific Force, and the Central Pacific Amphibious Corps.²⁷ Kirk recalled some twenty years later that his lecture covered Allied air cover, antimine operations, naval gunfire support, and the tactics and techniques of using the pontoon causeway system.²⁸ In his memorandum to the Bureau of Personnel documenting the event, Kirk noted that special emphasis was placed upon the use of pontoon causeways with LSTs.²⁹ At the end of the meeting both the Pacific and Atlantic amphibious players agreed to exchange officers after each major amphibious operation.³⁰

With this visit completed, Kirk returned to Norfolk, Virginia, where he turned his attention to his upcoming assignment as Commander, Task Force 122.³¹