Operation "HUSKY" July-August, 1943

The most gigantic fleet in the worlds history was assembled to launch the Allied invasion of Sicily. Over 3,200 ships, craft, and boats made up the Allied naval forces, of which more than 1,700 comprised the Western Naval Task Force. This enormous armada was assembled in the Mediterranean from remote regions, and was here organized and brought to. readiness for battle. Ships and craft were altered or mod modernized with special equipment and devices, and training was conducted to ensure that each group of the vast forces would execute its assignment as required by the detailed naval plans. In this manner the Sicilian campaign was originated, planned, organized and forces trained in the five months since the Anfa Conference at Casablanca. The Western Naval Task Force, under my command, had the task of training, embarking, transporting, protecting and landing the American invasion troops in Sicily of supporting the military operations by naval combatant forces and of ensuring the rapid, orderly flow of logistic maintenance to the military forces throughout the campaign. The Allied naval forces in the Mediterranean were so deployed as to gain the ascendency over enemy submarines, and to bring to action and destroy any enemy forces which threatened the vast convoy movements engaged in the invasion. The amphibious assaults were uniformly successful. The only serious threat was an enemy counter-attack on D plus one day against the 1st Infantry Division when a German tank force drove across the Gela plain to within one thousand yards of the DIME beaches. The destruction of this armored force by naval gunfire delivered by U. S. cruisers and destroyers, and the recovery of the situation through naval support, was one of the most noteworthy events of the operations.