Logistics played a key role in the success of Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of Southern France during World War II that commenced with the US Seventh Army landings on the French Riviera on 15 August 1944. On 12 September, the Seventh Army made contact with Allied forces that had landed in Normandy earlier that year as part of Operation Overlord. The supporting logistical organizations continued to operate separately, with the Southern Line of Communications supporting the Seventh Army drawing its supplies from the North African Theater of Operations until it merged with the Communications Zone of the European Theater of Operations on 20 November.
The primary objective of the campaign was to capture the ports of Marseille and Toulon, preceding a drive northward up the Rhone valley to connect with Allied forces from Normandy. Both ports were captured, but they had been badly damaged by German demolitions and Allied bombing, so considerable effort was required to bring them into service. The unexpectedly rapid Allied advance was the principal cause of logistical problems, although a theater-wide shortage of service units and an unanticipated dearth of French civilian labor also contributed.
Operations in southern France gave French troops a chance to assist in the liberation of their country, but the French units also created an additional logistical burden because they lacked the service troops required to provide their support. These logistical constraints prevented the operational commanders from taking full advantage of the opportunities offered by the German retreat. To facilitate the advance, engineers repaired bridges, rehabilitated railways, and laid pipelines.
The logistics plan gave priority to ammunition during combat loading, in the expectation that the Germans would stubbornly resist the invasion. When this proved to not be the case, the ammunition in the assault and follow-up convoys had to be moved out of the way to reach other materiel, which slowed unloading. Efforts to alter the shipping schedules met with mixed success. The operations of the Seventh Army were hampered by these logistical constraints. Many soldiers had to subsist on K-rations for extended periods, because fresh meat and produce were unavailable in the first month of the campaign due to a lack of refrigerator cars and trucks.
Southern France did not produce sufficient food to feed itself, and food supplies for the civilian population had to be given additional priority. As the weather deteriorated in September, the advance slowed, and there was a rush to equip the soldiers with winter clothing. The October battles demonstrated that the German capacity for hard fighting had not been overestimated, and critical shortages of ammunition occurred.
Background
A direct Allied invasion of southern France was considered at the Trident Conference in May 1943, but it was regarded as too risky and was passed over in favor of an Allied invasion of Italy. Nonetheless, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff continued to consider the operation, as resources had accumulated in the North African Theater of Operations (NATOUSA), including a large French Army that was being raised and equipped in North Africa. Not all of these resources were required for operations in the Mediterranean, but shipping was scarce, and the resources needed for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, were often more easily moved from the United States to the United Kingdom than from North Africa to the United Kingdom.
Plans for Overlord called for a concurrent diversionary effort against southern France, which was codenamed Operation Anvil. Anvil's objectives were the seizure of the ports of Marseille and Toulon, followed by a drive northward up the Rhone valley to link up with the Overlord forces. At the Tehran Conference in November 1943, the Premier of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, came out in favor of operations in southern France. The Combined Chiefs of Staff therefore adopted a resolution to "launch Overlord during May, in conjunction with a supporting operation against the south of France on the largest scale that is permitted by the landing craft available at that time."
Another consequence of the Tehran Conference was the appointment of General Dwight D. Eisenhower to command Overlord. On 8 January 1944, he handed over command in the Mediterranean to British General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson. To give Wilson the forces he needed to capture Rome, the British and American chiefs agreed to retain troops in Italy and postpone Anvil to 10 July. Additional assault shipping Eisenhower required for Overlord was sent from the Mediterranean. The Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to take 26 Landing Ships, Tank (LSTs) and 40 landing craft required for Anvil from the American-led Pacific theater. This was the first time that assault shipping would actually be withdrawn from the Pacific, as opposed to merely diverted, but this offer was contingent on Anvil going ahead on 10 July, so the British Chiefs of Staff turned the offer down.
In April, the British chiefs suddenly announced that they were in favor of Anvil after all, to which the Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet, Admiral Ernest J. King replied that the offer to withdraw ships from the Pacific was still good. When the Combined Chiefs of Staff next met in London in mid-June, Eisenhower supported a three-division Anvilwhich he saw not only as providing more troops, but as the best way to capture a major port quicklysomething Overlord had not yet been able to accomplish. Wilson recommended a landing on the Istrian peninsula instead, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill suggested an operation to capture the Brittany ports. Churchill appealed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to cancel Anvil, but to no avail. On 2 July, Wilson was ordered to launch Anvil as a three-division assault by 15 August. The required assault shipping came from what remained in the Mediterranean, augmented by ships from the Pacific, and some released by Eisenhower. The Combined Chiefs of Staff changed the operation's codename to Dragoon on 1 August.
Planning In January 1944, a planning staff known as Force 163 was formed in Palermo under the US Seventh Army's Chief Engineer, Brigadier General Garrison H. Davidson. Force 163 moved to Algiers, near Wilson's Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ), where it began working on Anvil. Force 163 rejected the first proposed landing site near Hyères, as it was dominated by German guns on the Cap Benat and Giens Peninsulas and the Hyères Islands, as well as within range of the heavy guns protecting the Toulon naval base. The islands also obstructed the approaches to the beaches and the restricted areas where the minesweepers and bombardment ships had to operate. The planners therefore looked further afield, to a series of beaches around Cavalaire-sur-Mer, Saint-Tropez and Saint-Raphaël. These beaches were far from perfect, being separated by cliffs and rock outcrops, backed by dominating high ground, and possessing only restricted entries and exits.
Force 163's planning effort was hampered by the on-again, off-again nature of Anvil. There was uncertainty about the target date, and whether it would be a one-, two- or three-division operation. The departure of Lieutenant General George S. Patton for the United Kingdom along with key members of the staff left numerous unfilled positions at Seventh Army headquarters. This was remedied in March 1944 with the arrival of Lieutenant General Alexander Patch, who brought in members of the headquarters his former command, IV Corps, in to fill the vacancies. The Seventh Army and Vice Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt's Eighth Fleet headquarters moved to Naples on 8 July. Most of the Force 163 planners traveled on Hewitt's flagship, , so they could continue working during the voyage. On arrival, Force 163 was discontinued and Seventh Army officially took over planning. With the VI Corps and the XII Tactical Air Command headquarters also located in the Naples area, all the important headquarters were now located there, greatly facilitating planning.
Working from a December 1943 plan, Services of Supply (SOS) NATOUSA began placing supply requisitions for Anvil with the New York Port of Embarkation (POE) in January 1944. Starting in February, convoys sailing for the Mediterranean were partially loaded with Anvil supplies using a procedure known as "flatting". Cargo was placed in a ship's hold and then boarded over. The ships then carried cargo for other purposes above board and on their weather decks. The cancellation of Anvil in April left 64 ships in the Mediterranean with half their cargo capacity taken up with flatted Anvil supplies. Over the next few months, General Jacob L. Devers, the commander of NATOUSA, and Major General Thomas B. Larkin, the commander of SOS NATOUSA, protected the supplies, both afloat and ashore, that had been stockpiled for Anvil against being diverted to the Italian campaign. As a result, when Anvil was revived in June, 75 percent of the required supplies for a two-division assault were on hand, although there were critical shortages of engineer, signals and transportation equipment. A convoy carrying Anvil supplies departed New York on 1 July. When it arrived on 15 July, SOS NATOUSA calculated that all the supplies required for Anvil up to Dplus 90 (ninety days after the landing date) were on hand or en route.
Devers's decision to protect the supplies that had been assembled for Anvil had a second beneficial effect. The Anvil planners had estimated that, in addition to the ships required to support the Italian campaign, Anvil would require another 100 cargo ships to carry supplies for the assault, and 200 more sailings by D plus 90. The 64 ships with flatted Anvil cargo constituted the first instalment of additional shipping. Another 135 vessels arrived from the United States in convoys in June and July. AFHQ rounded up the remainder from ships already in the theater and from British sources. There was also a deficit of 65 LSTs. King promised 28 more, and Eisenhower another 24, still leaving Anvil 13 LSTs short. Based on an assumption that German air and naval activity would be weak, the planners decided to include the 64 flatted cargo ships in the assault convoy.
SOS NATOUSA created the Northern Base Section under the command of Colonel John P. Ratay in Corsica on 1 January 1944. Its initial assignment was to support air operations on the island, but it also became engaged in staging troops and loading supplies for Anvil. Most of the air units operating in support of Anvil would be based on Corsica, which had been in Allied hands since October 1943. The island had some disadvantages; malaria was endemic, and the transportation and communications infrastructure was underdeveloped. The best port was Bastia on the east coast. Engineers constructed and improved the roads, bridges and airfields, and signal units laid of telephone lines. By mid-June, 136,000 bombs, 3.5million rounds of ammunition and 2,500 drop tanks were present on the island.
The 21st Port was activated in Algiers by SOS NATOUSA on 25 June as a logistical planning unit for Anvil. It was followed by the Coastal Base Section (CBS), which was activated in Naples on 7 July under the command of Major General Arthur R. Wilson, formerly the commander of the Peninsula Base Section. Initially the headquarters was located at 370 Via dei Tribunali, Naples, but it moved to the Provincia Building in Piazzetta Duca d'Aosta next to the headquarters of the Peninsula Base Section. By 1 August, 162 personnel were assigned to CBS headquarters and 532 to the 21st Port, although some were still serving with their former units.