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Operation Husky: The Allied
Invasion of Sicily, 1943
by Thomas E. Nutter
Aspects of the Allied Invasion of Sicily, 1943
II. The Struggle for an Allied Plan
General Eisenhower attended the Casablanca Conference only briefly. On January
15, after a harrowing journey in which his B-17 lost two engines, and he ended
the trip in a parachute harness, he reported on the progress of the campaign in
Tunisia. The decisions of the Combined Chiefs of Staff first came to his
knowledge when he received his copy of the official minutes of the conference.
Eisenhower had anticipated that the Allies would pursue some further action in
the Mediterranean at the end of the Tunisian campaign, so that even before the
Casablanca Conference his staff had been tentatively planning an operation
against Sardinia and Corsica. The main effect of this exercise was to convince
Eisenhower that possession of Sicily would be of much more significance to the
Allies than the seizure of Sardinia and Corsica, since control of Sicily would
greatly facilitate control of the Mediterranean shipping lanes.
Broadly speaking, the decision of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in favor of an
operation against Sicily was taken in order to secure Allied lines of
communication in the Mediterranean, move the Italians in the direction of
abandoning the Axis, and assist the Russians by drawing away as many German
forces as possible. It was also hoped that the invasion would persuade Turkey
to enter the war on the side of the Allies. The Combined Chiefs went so far as
to tentatively set the date for the invasion during the favorable period of the
July moon, ultimately the period July 10 through July 14.
The view of the British Chiefs and their planners was that the campaign would
last six weeks, and that their effort would be mounted from North Africa rather
than from the United Kingdom. British planners believed that U.S. forces would
require the use of the ports in Algeria and Tunisia, and that accordingly the
British and Commonwealth forces would be limited to the ports of Haifa,
Alexandria, Port Said, Tripoli and Malta. In their view, use of these ports
would reduce the number of assault craft necessary for the British force from
190 to 65. The downside of this arrangement was that the invasion would be
delayed by a month's time, owing to the crowding which would result. The July
timetable was affirmed, however, when the U.S. Chiefs guaranteed that some of
the Tunisian ports would be made available to the British forces.
The Combined Chiefs' directive assigned Eisenhower responsibility for the
detailed planning, preparation and execution of the operation, and gave him
limited authority for the target date. The Combined Chiefs retained authority
for whether an earlier invasion date, during the favorable period of the June
moon, might be met, while directing Eisenhower to advise them of any
difficulties which might preclude a July invasion. The Chiefs gave Eisenhower a
deadline of March 1, at which time he was to confirm that there would not be a
delay in the launch date beyond the period of the August moon.
In spite of having set a tentative date for the invasion of early July, the
Combined Chiefs almost immediately instructed Eisenhower to work toward a
target date during the favorable period of the June moon. This was based on an
assumption that the Tunisian campaign would be completed by April 30. After an
intensive study of the question, Eisenhower and his staff reported to the
Chiefs on February 11 that such a date was out of the question, since it would
mean reducing the amount of training time to an unacceptable level.
Eisenhower's conclusion was based on three considerations, namely (1) that the
U.S. 3d Infantry Division, identified already as a part of the invasion force,
was to be used in Tunisia as well, and could not be ready in June, even if the
Tunisian campaign were wrapped up by the end of April; (2) that the preparation
of airfields in Tunisia would require at least four weeks, and that it was
still uncertain whether the Tunisian ports would be available to mount the
invasion; and (3) that insufficient landing craft were available to adequately
train the armored units for the invasion.
The Combined Chiefs rejected Eisenhower's report on February 19, stating that
"all preparations must be pushed with the utmost vigor to achieve" the June
date. Churchill was particularly adamant that "[I]t is absolutely necessary to
do this operation in June. We shall become a laughing stock if, during the
spring and early summer, no British and American soldiers are firing at any
German and Italian soldiers." On March 20 Eisenhower reported the unanimous
opinion of all his commanders that the tentative date of June 10 would be
impossible to meet, and that in fact no date before July 10 would be possible,
unless there were a total and immediate Axis collapse in Tunisia. Again on
April 10 he confirmed that a date of June 10 was not feasible, but advised that
"the state of our preparations should make the July date possible." The
Combined Chiefs approved Eisenhower's decision for a July D-day on April 13.
Some of the American forces that would be used in the Sicilian campaign had
previously been detailed for action in the event of intervention by the Germans
from Spain. The so-called Northern Task Force, under General Mark Clark, had
developed plans for action either in Spanish Morocco or the Iberian Peninsula,
and substantial forces were maintained in Algeria and French Morocco for this
eventuality. But the decision in favor of the HUSKY operation quickly
unraveled the Northern Task Force. Eisenhower stripped it of forces in the
United Kingdom that had been designated for possible use in a Spanish campaign,
reassigned its staff for HUSKY and appropriated its shipping and
landing craft for the upcoming invasion.
As Alexander remained absorbed with the Tunisian campaign, Eisenhower appointed
Major General C.H. Gairdner to head a special combined planning staff. Major
General A.A. Richardson succeeded Gairdner in May. The combined staff was
organized according to the British system, since it had been determined that
the ground campaign would be commanded by a British general, namely the deputy
Commander-in-Chief of the operation. Eisenhower's headquarters was in the St.
George Hotel in Algiers, but because of a lack of space at that venue, the
combined planning staff occupied the Ecole Normale in the Algiers suburb of
Bouzarea. The headquarters for FORCE 343 (later the U.S. Seventh Army) first
located in Rabat, French Morocco, and later moved to Mostaganem, Algeria. While
the naval headquarters was also located in Algiers, with Admiral Cunningham and
U.S. Admiral Hewitt installed at the St. George Hotel (165 miles from
Mostaganem and 555 miles from Rabat), the subordinate naval commanders were
located 200 miles away at Oran and Bizerta, respectively 200 miles and 335
miles from Algiers. The combined planning staff was designated H.Q. FORCE 141,
derived from the room number at the St. George Hotel where the Allied Force
Headquarters (A.F.H.Q.) had first met to discuss the Sicily operation. It later
became the headquarters for the 15th Army Group. It had no indigenous
intelligence section, but was forced to rely on A.F.H.Q. for intelligence which
had to be obtained by a special liaison section, described by Eisenhower as "an
arrangement which resulted in a not altogether satisfactory production of
intelligence in the earlier period." The planning situation was a major
detriment to Eisenhower. Eisenhower experienced frustration from the very
beginning. In a letter to Marshall dated January 30, 1943, he reported that
Alexander had just announced his decision to accept the command arrangement for
HUSKY .
. . . although I know he is not particularly happy about it. I
immediately replied, asking him to name his Chief of Staff and to come here in
person as quickly as he can. These two campaigns have definitely merged into
one, and it is high time that Alexander got on the job and took the tactical
reins in his hands.[10] The bane of Eisenhower's existence
quickly became what he identified as the "committee system of command" favored
by his three British subordinates.[11] He decried this tendency among
Alexander, Cunningham and Tedder, and complained that "it seems impossible for
the British to grasp the utter simplicity of the system that we employ."
Eisenhower made clear that he considered the committee system to be a "definite
invasion" of his authority, and advised Marshall that he would not permit it to
control and direct "any important military venture."
Many commands subordinate to FORCE 141 were widely scattered, some as much as a
thousand miles from one another. Practical problems resulted. Naval requests
for photographic reconnaissance of the beaches on Sicily were not given timely
consideration. The air force failed to give the navy prints of the sorties that
were actually flown, when such prints were widely distributed to military
commands without any responsibility for the landing shores. The result was that
naval planners were seriously hampered in their study of beach characteristics.
When the FORCE 141 plans were ultimately complete, the army and navy planners
of the Western Naval Task Force were withdrawn from the FORCE 141 planning
staff. Henceforth there was poor communication between the air planners and
their army and navy colleagues, and indeed the development of the air plan was
unknown to the navy or the military. When finally the air plan was made known,
it was lacking in information about either fighter cover or fighter support
during the landing phase, though it did provide data on air force equipment and
supplies scheduled to be brought ashore. There was also serious disagreement
among the air force, army and navy over the issue of pre-invasion targets.
Seventh Army Headquarters, in conjunction with the navy, assembled a list of
bombing targets suitable for attack prior to D-day. When its creators provided
the list to the air planners, the latter found the targets unsuitable and
rejected the list. This step seriously disconcerted the military and naval
planners, since they regarded the targets they had selected as threats to the
success of the amphibious assault. Following a great deal of controversy, a
list of targets "satisfactory to the air force" ultimately issued. A similar
circumstance prevailed with respect to the bombing agenda for D-day, which was
not disclosed to the naval and army commanders until the time the invasion
fleet sailed for Sicily. Because of this circumstance, the naval and military
commanders went to the combat zone with almost no knowledge of what their air
force colleagues would contribute in either the landing phase or afterwards.
The air force failed to communicate to them even the most general information
about the air situation, so that the army and navy commanders had no
information about the extent to which the air force had succeeded in disrupting
enemy communications or reducing his beach defenses.
One of the problems confronting Eisenhower and the FORCE 141 staff was that the
island of Sicily was obviously much more accessible to Axis forces than it was
to those of the Allies. The Tactical Appreciation prepared by Eisenhower's
staff showed that there were six train ferries operating daily across the
Straits of Messina between Sicily and the Italian mainland. There were four
termini on Sicily at Messina, and three on the mainland so that the ferry
service could deliver 40,000 men, or in the alternative 7,500 men and 750
vehicles, in a 24 hour period. In fact, at the time the Tactical Appreciation
was done, there were never more than two such ferries in operation, but the
staff also reckoned that there was a steamer service with a 24 hour capacity of
12,000, as well as an air transport service capable of lifting 1000 tons of
supplies per day. Sicily possessed 19 airfields suitable for use by the Axis.
The combined planning staff also recognized that Messina was the most important
objective on the island. However, direct assaults upon it, either between
Messina and Palermo to the West, or between Messina and Catania to the south,
were out of the question. The Straits were closed to Allied shipping and beyond
the range of fighter cover, as were the areas to the west and south of Messina.
For obvious reasons, landing areas on Sicily were limited to beaches where
direct fighter cover could be provided, between Avola and Gela in the southeast
and between Sciacca and Marinella in the west. In those areas there were no
major ports to provide unloading facilities. For this reason the terrain was
thought to favor the Axis. The available beaches were not particularly suitable
to motor transport, as they were of soft sand in a gentle gradient. They were
also narrow, and gave way, with the exception of the plain surrounding Catania,
to terrain that was alternately hilly and mountainous, and which would
obviously confine tanks and motor transport to the few available roads.
Eisenhower and his staff rightly concluded that some of the terrain would be so
difficult as to require the use of pack animals.
In order to get a sufficient force onto the island to effectively confront the
enemy, it would be necessary for the Allies to capture suitable ports. Since
Messina would be unavailable, Eisenhower planned to seize the ports of Syracuse
and Catania in the east, and Palermo in the west. In this regard, Catania and
Palermo were recognized as essential, for without them it would not be possible
to maintain the forces necessary to capture the island. Since all of these
ports were beyond the range of fighter cover, the first objective of the
assault forces would be the capture of the airfields in both the southeast and
west of the island, in order to allow the air cover to be extended in such a
way as to support capture of the ports.
The combined planning staff quickly resolved that two task forces would be
necessary, one from the west and one from the southeast. However, while it
would be easier to provide air cover to the western approach, this avenue was
at the same time more exposed to attack by enemy aircraft based at Sardinia.
Such vulnerability was not present for the southeastern approach, which had the
added advantage of lending itself to surprise, since the progress of a naval
force along this course would more nearly approximate a normal convoy. The
Tactical Appreciation also suggested that the western landings would be more
difficult. Such a situation normally would have suggested a simultaneous
attack, designed to disperse the enemy's resources to the maximum degree. There
were strong arguments, however, to support the staggering of the attacks, with
the southeastern assault to be staged first. The element of surprise was one
important consideration favoring staggered attacks, as was the notion that a
move first in the southeast would tend to draw off enemy resources from the
west. The deciding consideration in favor of simultaneous attacks, however, was
the decision to employ airborne troops in advance of the landings. The airborne
units were to be used to soften the enemy's beach defenses, since the other
commitments of both the naval and air elements were so great that those
elements could not be relied upon to reduce the beach defenses. Indeed, the
Tactical Appreciation placed the role of the paratroops in softening the
defenses higher on the priority list than even the seizure of the island's
airfields.
The planned use of airborne troops, however, exacerbated Eisenhower's timing
problems, since whereas the use of parachutists implied moonlight, the naval
forces required darkness for their approach. Indeed, it was essential that the
landings occur in the two hours of darkness before dawn, so that adequate
anti-aircraft defenses could be established ashore before first light. The only
suitable compromise was that the invasion be launched in the so-called
"favorable period" of the moon, in effect its second quarter, when there would
be moonlight in the early period of the night, and complete darkness after
midnight. Accordingly, when the month of July was determined to be the most
likely target date for the operation, the deadline of the 10th of the month was
automatically determined.
A working plan for placing the Allied forces on Sicily first appeared in
February, 1943. On February 12, the basic plan developed by British planners
and accepted by the Combined Chiefs, was distributed to the operational
planning staff, where it was recognized as preliminary and tentative. This
initial plan envisioned two simultaneous assaults, one in the southeast and one
in the west. There were to be follow-up landings at Catania and Palermo, with
ten divisions safely on the island within a week of the initial assault.
Indeed, the plan concentrated on the seizure of the ports of Palermo and
Catania, rather than on the destruction of enemy forces. This original draft
had at least two major faults, namely (1) it called for dissipation of the
assault force by requiring immediate seizure of the widely dispersed airfields
on the island, and (2) it did not call for the two principal task forces to be
mutually supporting. The latter fault was potentially disastrous, as it would
allow the defenders to concentrate on one landing force at a time in an effort
to throw it back into the sea.
General Alexander appreciated the plan's shortcomings, and considered
concentrating both assault forces in one attack against the southeast corner of
Sicily, although he concluded that such an approach was not feasible because it
would not yield enough port facilities to support the operation. General
Bernard L. Montgomery, the putative commander of British ground troops in HUSKY
, found other reasons to object to the initial plan. In its original
conception, the plan called for British Eighth Army to land not only on the
eastern shore, but also around on the southwestern side near the ports of
Licata and Gela. The far more significant ports of Augusta and Syracuse lay on
the eastern side, yet the plan called for only about one third of the Eighth
Army's strength to be committed to this portion of the assault. For this
reason, Montgomery declared in March, 1943 that he could not accept the plan in
its present embodiment.
In spite of Eisenhower's resolve, matters did not appreciably
improve. On March 3, he lamented to Marshall that
HUSKY planning is most involved and difficult. Since, by direction, we
are using for the operation the British system of command, the whole
arrangement - in high echelons - presents intricacies and difficulties that
cause me a lot of headaches.[12] He reiterated this theme less
than a month later, calling the HUSKY planning "onerous and
difficult." He reported having made changes in the plan against his better
judgment, simply in order "to satisfy Alexander and Montgomery." Apart from his
problems in interacting with his subordinates, Eisenhower expressed his fears
about the outcome of the operation, claiming that the Allies were "skating
close to the edge of unjustified or at least dangerous risk" owing to the
unavailability of sufficient combat loaders.[13]
Early in the planning stage the Western Task Force (later U.S. Seventh Army)
and the Eastern Task Force (later British Eighth Army) were identified as FORCE
343 and FORCE 545 respectively. On March 18 representatives of
both FORCE 343 and FORCE 545 attended a conference at HQ
FORCE 141, resulting in an outline plan issued March 25. The plan
envisioned staggered assaults, beginning with British troops landing on beaches
extending from Syracuse to Gela. Thereafter, one U.S. division would land
between Sciacca and Mazzara on D plus 2. The remaining U.S. divisions would
land on D plus 5 immediately west of Palermo. There were to be five British
divisions and four American divisions. Eisenhower disliked this plan, since in
his view it dispersed Allied forces to an unacceptable degree. Moreover,
Alexander and Montgomery had previously convinced him that Allied forces were
spread too thin, and that FORCE 545 could not capture the airfields in
the Catania/Gela sector without being reinforced with an additional division.
Eisenhower debated for the next six weeks deciding which was the greater
risk---the failure to take the Catania/Gela airfields, or the failure to
capture Palermo early and put it to use as a port.
Eisenhower concluded that HUSKY would fail without the early capture
of the Catania/Gela airfields. The "guiding principle" in planning therefore
became the taking of sufficient "insurance" for the rapid capture of these
targets. The first proposed solution to this conundrum was a compromise. In
view of the shortage of shipping, the preferred alternative seemed to be to
transfer one American division from the Western to the Eastern Task Force. This
could only be done by canceling the southwestern assault scheduled for D plus
2. This would permit the shifting of the U.S. 3d Infantry Division to the Gela
landing sector. This solution was inherently flawed, however, because the
southwestern assault force, now substantially weakened, had the objective of
taking the Sciacca/Mazzara area and its airfields, to enable close air support
for the Palermo landings scheduled for D plus 5. Those landings were not
feasible until the Catania/Gela fields in the southeast had been taken. The D
plus 5 target for the Palermo assault therefore had to be abandoned in favor of
a date "determined by the progress of FORCE 545."
Neither were the British keen for the plan in question. They feared that if the
capture of Palermo were delayed, the Germans would turn their continued
possession of it to good account, and that the Luftwaffe would belabor the
Eastern Task Force from those southwestern air bases which would now be left
untouched. In light of these concerns, on March 25, 1943 the British suggested
to the Combined Chiefs of Staff that an additional division "must be provided
by hook or by crook" in keeping with the original plan for the early capture of
Palermo. The Combined Chiefs informed Eisenhower of the British view of the
case on the next day. Eisenhower at least tentatively restored the original
plan, including an assault on D plus 2 by an American division in the southwest
sector. He also increased the reserve force at Malta from a Brigade Group to a
full infantry division. This unit was neither assault trained nor assault
loaded as a result of the shortage of adequate shipping.
Montgomery suggested an alternative approach in which the landing in the
Gela-Licata area would be eliminated. In this way, he would gain at least
another division for the assault on the eastern side of the island, and his
forces would be united, and thus have greater striking power. Montgomery's
amended plan would mean that certain enemy airfields would not be seized. This
subjected it to an immediate and vociferous attack from Allied air and naval
commanders. Air Chief Marshal Tedder argued that the failure to land in the
Gela-Licata area and secure the airfields in that sector would greatly weaken
the Allied position, so much so that the risk of losing large assault vessels
would be greatly increased. Admiral Cunningham shared Tedder's views.
General Alexander sided with Montgomery, agreeing to strengthen Eighth Army's
assault on the east coast by moving all of its troops to that side of the
island. He endeavored to soften the blow to his air and naval commanders by
taking the U.S. 3d Infantry Division from its American task force, placing it
under Montgomery's command, and assigning it to land in the Gela-Licata sector.
To avoid any resultant attenuation in American strength, Alexander proposed
that Seventh Army's landings be delayed several days so as to strike at the
Axis forces while they were fully engaged with the British.
Although General Patton objected to the loss of 3d Infantry Division on the
ground, among others, that his own forces would be unacceptably weakened,
General Eisenhower nevertheless approved Alexander's new plan because he
considered success in the southeast quadrant of Sicily to be vital to the
operation.
The British eventually mitigated the controversy, at least in part, by
supplying an additional division, along with its transport, to Montgomery, and
releasing the 3d Infantry Division to General Patton. However, Alexander
remained wedded to the concept of follow-on landings. Now, 3d Infantry Division
would land on D plus 2, while the remainder of the American force would come
ashore in the Palermo sector on D plus 5.
Both Eisenhower and the British took the view that in the event "substantial"
German forces were encountered in the assault zone, "our operation offered
scant promise of success". In this context, "substantial" was defined to mean
anything more than two divisions. Moreover, while the Allies "naturally'
denigrated the combat efficiency of the Italian formations on the island, they
also believed that the presence of "substantial" German forces would enhance
the resolve of the Italians. The Tactical Appreciation suggested that two
German divisions were indeed on the island, and the possibility existed that
they might be reinforced from either the Italian mainland or Tunisia.
Eisenhower was so concerned with this contingency that he felt it his "duty to
warn the Combined Chiefs of Staff that in that event our venture would become
risky indeed." He did so twice, on March 20 and April 7, and was rebuked for
his apparent lack of confidence in Allied arms. Churchill vociferously
denounced Eisenhower's views on this issue.
Months of preparation, sea power and air power in abundance and yet
two German divisions are sufficient to knock it all on the head. I do not think
we can rest content with such doctrines...it is perfectly clear that the
operations must either be entrusted to someone who believes in them, or
abandoned. I trust the Chiefs of Staff will not accept these pusillanimous and
defeatist doctrines from whoever they come...I regard the matter as serious in
the last degree. We have told the Russians that they cannot have their supplies
by the northern convoy for the sake of HUSKY, and now HUSKY is
to be abandoned if there are two German divisions (strength unspecified) in the
neighborhood. What Stalin would think of this when he has 185 German divisions
on his front, I cannot imagine. As might be expected, the Allied
force commanders remained skeptical of Alexander's plan, in spite of its
changes, or perhaps because of them. Because Montgomery was preoccupied with
operations in Tunisia, on April 17 he sent his chief of staff, Major General
Francis ("Freddie") de Guingand, to meet with the British planning staff in
Cairo. There, de Guingand reviewed the most recent plan variant with Lieutenant
General Miles C. Dempsey, commander of British XIII Corps. He concluded that
the plan did not provide for sufficient concentration of force to assure Allied
success. Montgomery then flew to Cairo on April 23 to confer with de Guingand
and others. The next day he informed Alexander of his misgivings, which were
based on his apprehension that the plan wrongly assumed that the Germans and
Italians would not mount a serious defense of Sicily. "Never," said Montgomery,
"was there a greater error."
Montgomery wanted to concentrate his forces in a landing in the Gulf of Noto,
to the south of Syracuse. He pointed out that this operation would receive
adequate air cover from aircraft based on Malta. With such a landing, Eighth
Army would be capable of capturing, in short order, the ports of Syracuse,
Augusta and Catania. Tedder and Cunningham, however, were not satisfied, and
wanted to extend the British beachhead to Gela, in order to cover the airfields
at Comiso and Ponte Olivo. Montgomery insisted that he would need yet further
assault forces to accomplish this expanded task.
In view of the continued lack of consensus, Alexander convened a conference in
Algiers on April 29. Lieutenant General Oliver Leese acted as Montgomery's
chief of staff, since de Guingand had been injured in an air crash. In addition
to presenting Montgomery's views, Leese suggested that the Allies scrap the
bifurcated attack of the original plan in favor of a combined U.S.-British
assault in the southeast corner of the island. In this scheme, U.S. forces
would land on either side of the Pachino peninsula, while the British came
ashore in the Gulf of Noto. Both Cunningham and Tedder rejected Leese's
suggestion, because it would leave untouched a substantial number of airbases,
creating a heavy burden for Allied air units and placing Allied shipping at
risk. They insisted that the southeastern assaults move immediately to seize
the airfields at Comiso, Ponte Olivo and Biscari. Montgomery balked at this
notion, arguing that his forces were not sufficient to secure the use of these
fields; the best that he could hope to do would be to deny them to the enemy.
For Eisenhower, this evidently irreconcilable conflict was yet further evidence
of "the fundamental weakness of our entire strategic plan". Planning for the
operation had thus reached an impasse. Eisenhower sought to break it by
assembling the commanders in Algiers for another conference on May 2.
Montgomery appeared in person to argue for the new plan first expressed by
General Leese. On May 3 Eisenhower stopped the "tinkering" of his staff,
junking the original plan in favor of Montgomery's. He threw out the idea of a
southwestern assault on D plus 2, as well as the notion of assaults west of
Palermo on D plus 5. Instead the Western Task Force was to be shifted to the
southeastern landing. In so doing, Eisenhower accepted the risks associated
with failure to bring Palermo online as a functioning port, thereby casting
aside the evident teaching of the North African operation that an invading
force must have at its disposal a functioning port within 48 hours of landing.
Eisenhower relied on three elements in assuming this risk, namely (1) the more
favorable summer weather; (2) the certainty of sea and air superiority; and (3)
the availability of the DUKW, a technical innovation which had been
lacking in the TORCH landings. The Combined Chiefs of Staff approved
the new plan on May 13. It called for the entire American force to be
concentrated from Licata eastward to the Pachino peninsula; the British force
would land between the peninsula and Syracuse. In effect, the Allies had
abandoned two of the main tenets of the original plan of the Combined Chiefs,
which called for quick seizure of the major ports and the airfields. The new
plan therefore left unresolved the concerns which Admiral Cunningham and Air
Chief Marshal Tedder had all along expressed. Indeed, apparently no one but its
author liked the Montgomery plan, and Eisenhower was persuaded to accept it
because his logistics officers told him that the DUKW s , now
available in quantity, would enable them to adequately supply the Seventh Army.
- - -
Copyright © 2003 Thomas E. Nutter
Written by Thomas E. Nutter. If you have questions or comments on this
article, please contact Mr. Nutter at: tenutter@gmail.com.
About the author: Tom Nutter is in his 25th
year of practicing domestic and international patent, copyright and trademark
law, and is the Managing Partner of an intellectual property law practice in St. Louis, Missouri. He holds
the Masters and Doctorate degrees in diplomatic/military history from the
University of Missouri. His interests include railroad history as well as
European and American military history in the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries. He lives in St. Louis with his wife, three children and two German
Shepherd dogs, Caesar and Cleopatra.
Published online: 03/01/2003.
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