Page 255 - Il Mediterraneo quale elemento del Potere Marittimo - Atti 16-18 settembre 1996

THE U.S. FLEET IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
DURING WORLD W AR II

DEAN C. ALLARD

I am always amazed to realize how little attention Americans pay to the role
of the American Navy in the Mediterranean during World War II. Compared to
the outpouring of literature o n the Second W orld War in the Pacific, there are
only a few serious writings by U .S. N a val historians o n a. subject that is of major
professional and historical importance O>.
American neglect may result from the fact that the Mediterranean was prima-
rily an area of British strategie concern. To be sure, Dwight Eisenhower served
as the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean untilJanuary 1944. But
prior to the landings in southern France during the summer of 1944, British forces
in this theater were numerically predominant. Not surprisingly, therefore, Eisen-
hower's overall army, navy, and air force component commanders were all British.
Nor should we forget that London gained American assent for the North African,
Sicilian, and Italian campaigns, only over the opposition or serious reservations
of senior U.S. military leaders who viewed these operations as diversions from the
decisive theater of war in northern Europe. The invasion of southern France, a
move that directly supported the northern European campaign, was the sole effort
in the Middle Sea initiated by the U nited States < >.
2
The essential preamble to this story is the invasion of French North Africa
in November 1942. In operation Torch, as that campaign was called, the United
States Navy organized and trained a force that crossed the ocean to land American
troops on the Atlantic coast of French Marocco. Two other major task forces of
this campaign were mounted in the U nited Kingdom. Un der British operational
command, their landing areas were on Algeria's Mediterranean littoral. Neverthe-
less, due to the hope that the·French would be less likely to resist the United States
than Great Britain, the assault force in Algeria also was predominandy American.
The overall strategie goal of the entire Torch operation W96 to open a new front
against the Axis armies in North Africa <3>.
Operation Torch featured severa! key American leaders who later won distinc-
tion in the Mediterranean. Commanding the Western Naval Task Force that sailed
from Norfolk, Virginia late in October 1942 was H. Kent Hewitt, who would ser-
4
ve as the U.S. Naval officer in ali future operations in the Middle Sea < >. Admiral
Hewitt' s Chief of Staff, Rear Admiral] oh n L. Hall, J r., later served as a task grou p
commander under Hewitt at the Sicily and Salerno landings <5>. In ali, Hewitt's task