Chapter 159 Volume 5, Chapter 4, Go West! 【1】Man-made port

Commodore Wingate Commodore Overlord Operations Plan Cossack's work on the Queen Mary Where is the offensive from?The Necessity of Ports and Docks The Birth of the Mulberry Project The Plan is Underway with a Grand Design of the Floating Breakwaters The Floating Airfield The Three Main Ideas of the Overlord Operation Plan Mountbatten Appointed Supreme Commander of Burma I on August 7 Memorandum on Military Operations in the Far East. [1] "Go West! "is a sea adventure novel published by British writer Charles Kingsley in 1855, and it is used here to refer to the author's trip to Canada and the United States.translator

Because of the prospect of imminent victory in Sicily, and because of the situation in Italy and the progress of the war, I felt it necessary in July to revisit President Roosevelt and hold another Anglo-American conference.Roosevelt proposed Quebec as the location for the meeting.Mr. MacKenzie King welcomes this suggestion, and for us, it could not be more appropriate.If one were to choose a meeting place for those who would guide the war policy of the Western world at this momentous moment, there could be no more appropriate and ideal place than the ancient Quebec castle, situated on Canada's doorstep and overlooking the mighty St. Lawrence River place.Although President Roosevelt readily accepted Canada's good intentions, he thought it impossible to officially make Canada a member of the conference because he was worried that Brazil and other American member states among the allies would make the same request.We must also take into account the demands of Australia and the other Dominions.This delicate issue was resolved and overcome thanks to the grandeur of the Prime Minister and Government of Canada.Personally, I am sure that, as all important business concerns Anglo-American relations, we and the United States should confine this meeting to our own two countries.The triumvirate meeting attended by the heads of the three major powers is the main goal in the future; the current meeting is limited to the United Kingdom and the United States.We named this meeting the Quadrant.

I took a train from London to the Firth of Clyde on the evening of the 4th of August, with a train full of the large staff we needed.The Queen Mary is anchored in the Firth of Clyde, waiting for us.Apart from about fifty Royal Marine orderlies, I estimate that we numbered well over two hundred.The scope of discussion at this meeting included not only the Mediterranean campaign, which has now entered its first climax, but even various preparations for the plan to cross the English Channel in 1944, the entire operational command of the Indian battlefield, and our war against Japan. tasks undertaken in.

For the question of crossing the strait, we took with us three officers sent by Lieutenant General Morgan. Lieutenant General Morgan is the chief of staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces, but the Supreme Commander has not yet been finalized.He and his joint Anglo-American staff have completed our joint planning outline.Since we were reviewing all our work in the Indian and Far East theaters, I brought with me General Wavell's Chief of Military Operations, who had flown in from India. In addition, I took with me a young Brigadier General named Wingate.He had gained a reputation in Abyssinia as the leader of the irregular army, and had done great service in the jungle warfare in Burma.These new feats earned him the title of Clive of Burma in some of the armies in which he served.I had heard many legends about all this, and knew how the Zionists had scouted him to be Commander-in-Chief of a possible future Israeli army.I called him back to see him before leaving for Quebec.On the evening of August 4th, when I was preparing to have a private meal in Downing Street, the news came that he had arrived by plane and had actually come to the Downing Street residence.I immediately invited him to dinner.We had not talked for half an hour before I felt that I had before me a very distinguished personage.Immediately after the meeting, he talked eloquently, and the central content was to explain how the airborne long-range breakthrough troops defeated the Japanese in the jungle warfare.What he said intrigued me.I would like to hear more and would love to have him tell his story to the chiefs of staff of the armed forces.

【1】Robert Clive (1725｜1774), a British, has been engaged in the invasion of India for a long time, and fought fiercely with the French colonists in India.translator I immediately resolved to take him with me on this voyage.I told him our train would leave at ten o'clock.It was nearly nine o'clock.Wingate had just arrived here after a three-day flight from the actual front line, wearing nothing but what he was wearing.Of course he was more than willing to go, but regretted that he could not go home to see his wife.His wife lives in Scotland and has not yet heard of his arrival.My private office, however, has a way of coping with this situation.Mrs. Wingate was called up by the police at her home, and was sent to Edinburgh to be picked up by our train to join us for Quebec.She had no idea what it was all about until early in the morning, when she did meet her husband at Waverly station.They had a most pleasant voyage together.

Since I knew that President Roosevelt liked to meet young heroes, I invited Lieutenant Colonel Guy Gibson to accompany him.Gibson recently led the airstrikes that damaged the Monet and Eder dams.These dams supply the industry of the Ruhr area and are the source of water for large fields, rivers and canals.A special type of mine was created to break the dam, but it had to be dropped at night from a height of not more than sixty feet.After several months of continuous and intensive practice, sixteen Lancasters of the 617th Squadron of the Royal Air Force carried out the air raid on the night of 16 May.Half the plane was lost, but Gibson held on to the end.He cut his way through heavy artillery fire and circled the target, commanding his fleet.He now wears an impressive array of medals, the Victoria Cross, Commendation and Cord of Merit, and the Flying Cross of Distinguished Merit and Cord of Merit but no other ribbons.It's unrivaled.

My wife is with me, and my daughter Mary is now a lieutenant in the anti-aircraft battery as my squire.We set sail on the 5th of August, this time to Halifax, Nova Scotia, instead of New York. The Queen Mary cut through the waves, and we lived comfortably aboard, eating pre-war standards.As on previous voyages, we were busy with work.Our large number of code telegraphers, as well as the escort cruisers sending out telegrams, keep us in touch with the important events of the outside world at all times.Every day I work with the Chiefs of Staff of the three services on various aspects of the issues that will be discussed with our American friends.The most important of these, of course, is the Overlord Battle Plan.

I had prepared to devote the spare time of the five days of the voyage to the grand plan of our long-running crossing of the Channel.Since the beginning of the struggle in Norway and along the French coast in 1940, we have been conducting research on an ever-increasing scale.We have learned a great deal about amphibious warfare.At that time I set up the Joint Warfare Agency, under the charge of my friend Admiral Sir Roger Case, which has played a very important role and completed a new technology.The small raids of the commandos that paved the way for a major offensive not only gave us confidence and experience, but also showed the world that although we were besieged on all sides, we were not content with passive defense.The Americans, who remained neutral at the time, had already seen this new trend, and they later developed it on a large scale in their own way.

In October 1941, Admiral Keyes was replaced by Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten.We are still under strong pressure from our enemies, and our only ally, Russia, appears to be on the verge of defeat.However, I have decided that, as soon as the situation is reversed, I am ready to attack the Continent.First, we must increase the intensity and scale of our strikes, and then translate all of this experience into larger operational plans.In order to launch a successful attack from the United Kingdom, new weapons of war must be invented and developed, and the armed forces participating in the campaign must be trained to act like a single army in operational planning and actual combat. to support the industry of the British Isles, and to turn the whole of the British Isles into an armed barracks for the largest naval assault ever undertaken.

When Mountbatten came to see me at Checkers, before assuming his new duties, I told him, according to his account, that you plan an offensive.In your headquarters, never think about defense.These words governed his actions.To equip him with the necessary powers in the execution of his duties, I appointed him to the Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Services Committee, and conferred on him the provisional rank of Vice-Admiral and the honorary equivalent in the other services.As Defense Secretary, I still maintain personal responsibility for his headquarters so he can report directly to me if necessary.Commandos played an increasingly important role in our operations at Vaagso in Norway, at Breneva, at Saint-Nazaire, and so on.Our raids culminated in a costly offensive at Dieppe in August 1942.Thereafter, we applied our lessons to the landings in North Africa and our amphibious operations in the Mediterranean as we moved on to the large-scale Anglo-American offensive.In all these military operations, Mountbatten's agency played a prominent and necessary role.

In May 1942, it was decided to create an agency called the Unified Command to study this problem.The body included the home commander and Mountbatten, and later added General Eisenhower, who commanded American troops in Britain.At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, we decided to form an Allied Liaison Staff, headed by British officers, to prepare specific plans for the Overlord campaign.This organization began to work in London, referred to as Cossack [1], and was headed by Lieutenant General Morgan in the name of Chief of Staff of the Supreme Allied Command. [1] The pinyin of the first letter of the chief of staff of Kosak Supreme Allied Commander.translator The first problem was to decide where would be the best place for a large landing. There are several locations to choose from: the coast of the Netherlands or Belgium; the Pas de Calais; Region between the mouths of the Somme and Seine; Normandy; Brittany.Each of these locations has its pros and cons.These advantages and disadvantages must be comprehensively weighed according to different projects and changing factors, sometimes unpredictable factors.Chief among them are: beaches; weather and tides; where the airport is built; The distance of the voyage; the nearby ports that can be captured; the nature of the interior of the coast for the continuation of operations after landing; the cover afforded by home-based aircraft; the disposition of the enemy, their minefields and fortifications. The chosen locations were finally narrowed down to either the Pas de Calais or Normandy.The former position afforded us the best air cover, but here the enemy's fortifications were strongest; and although the distance by sea was shorter, this advantage was only superficial. Dover and Folkestone are much closer to Calais and Boulogne than from the Isle of Wight to Normandy, but the ports of Calais and Boulogne are too small to supply the needs of an offensive.Most of our ships have to sail from ports all along the southern coast of England, and therefore, in any case, have to cover a long distance. General Morgan and his advisers suggested the coast of Normandy, a proposition Mountbatten had championed from the start.This decision is undoubtedly correct now.Normandy gives us our best hope.The local fortifications are not as strong as those of the Pas-de-Calais.The waves and the beach are generally fair, and are somewhat shielded from the west winds by the Cotentinins.The interior of the coast is suitable for the rapid evacuation of large numbers of troops, and is far from the main force of the enemy.The port of Cherbourg can be captured after isolating it at the beginning of the campaign.It is also possible to siege and capture Brest at a later date. The coast between Le Havre and Cherbourg is, of course, entirely defended by forts and pillboxes of concrete, but since there is nothing within this fifty-mile half-moon beach capable of sustaining a large army, The port, therefore, we do not think that the Germans will be able to muster large numbers of troops in direct support of the coastal front.Their high command no doubt thought that this was a good area for an attack by ten or twenty thousand men at most, but that no invasion force could land unless Cherbourg was captured when it could be used. or get supplies.This is a coast suitable only for raids, but not for larger campaigns.As long as we gain a port that can accommodate a large army, this is the front line for the offensive. Of course, as the reader will see, I am always on the lookout for all ideas concerning landing craft and tank landing craft.Moreover, I have long been in favor of designing a pier such that its seaward end floats on the water.As early as May 30, 1942, I had sent out a memorandum during the discussion, and since then a lot of work has been done in this regard. Prime Minister to Commander of Joint Operations They have to float up and down with the ebb and flow of the tide.The anchor problem had to be solved.The boat must have a porthole door and a drawbridge of sufficient length to pass over the moorings on the quay.Please advise the best solution you have proposed in detail.There is no need to argue about this.Difficulty itself is enough to convince everything. Ideas later turned to creating a sheltered large area of ​​water protected by a breakwater built over several sunken ships, which sailed to the site under their own power and scuttled at the intended location.The design was originally conceived by Commodore Hughes-Hallet in June 1943, when he was Chief of Naval Staff in General Morgan's agency.Later, due to people's continuous imagination, design and experimentation, until now, in August 1943, there was a complete set of plans for the construction of two complete temporary ports.This man-made port can be towed to the site for use within a few days of the initial landing.We call these man-made harbors Project Mulberry, a code name that of course says nothing about its nature or purpose. One morning during our voyage Commodore McClain and two other officers under General Morgan were invited to see me while I lay in bed in my spacious cabin.After laying out a large map, they presented compactly and convincingly their plans for crossing the Channel into France.The reader is probably already familiar with the various arguments of the debates of 1941 and 1942 on this urgent question, but this is the first time I have heard of this complete and coherent plan, both in terms of numbers and tonnage, which was very precise and detailed.This is the result of long-term research by military officers in the United Kingdom and the United States. Further discussions in the next few days involved more technical details.Channel tides have swells in excess of twenty feet, with corresponding scouring forces along the beaches.The weather is often unstable, and small and high winds can suddenly set off violent waves within hours, which is irresistible for fragile artificial instruments.Those fools or scoundrels who have chalked on our walls the words "immediately open a second front" for the past two years have certainly not encountered these problems.I have been thinking carefully about these questions for a long time. It should be remembered that the problems we faced in our plans for Mulberry Harbor were complex and varied.The whole plan involves the construction of a large amount of special equipment in the UK, requiring more than one million tons of steel and concrete.Giving this project the highest priority would put even more strain on our already heavy-burdened machinery and ship-repair industries.All this equipment must be transported by sea to the field of operations, where it must be assembled as quickly as possible under the attack of the enemy and the vagaries of the weather. The overall design is magnificent.The huge pier is placed on the beach, and the seaward end of the pier floats and is covered.Ships and landing craft sailing along the coast can be unloaded on this kind of pier no matter how the tide rises and falls.In order to protect these piers from high winds and waves, the breakwaters had to extend seaward in a great arc, thus enclosing a large sheltered body of water.With such shelter, ships with deep draft can berth and unload, and various types of landing craft can come and go freely on the beach.The breakwaters are made of submerged concrete structures (code-named Phoenix) and shipwrecks (code-named Gooseberry).In the second volume of this book, I have described a similar structure, which I thought could have been used as an artificial harbor in the Bay of Helgoland during the First World War. [1] They will now form an integral part of this great plan. 【1】Refer to the second volume of this book, chapter twelfth. That's the plan for Mulberry Harbor.Even so, however, the plan was insufficient, as there was no room for all the ships we needed.Many ships had to be unloaded outside the port.In order to protect these ships and the large number of naval vessels involved in the battle, a separate plan was proposed for the construction of floating breakwaters.For this purpose, we are reviewing several designs, one of which is to install several pipes on the sea floor, so that the pipes will emit air bubbles, so that the air bubbles ejected from these pipes will form a continuous barrier to stop the waves. effect.We hope that this barrier can disrupt and disrupt the undulating motion of the waves.Another design, called Lilo, consists of a number of partially inflated pockets of air with a concrete curtain submerged in water.These air bags are fixed on the seaward side of Phoenix Breakwater, forming a parallel line and enclosing a larger area of ​​water.Neither of these ideas came to fruition, but a design called a trumpet was eventually adopted, which contained some of Lillo's features. It was a cross-shaped steel structure, about two hundred feet long and twenty-five feet high, all but the uppermost part of the cross was submerged in the water.As a result, the value of this design is questionable, as we shall see later. I am very pleased with the prospect that the full history of the above plan will be presented to President Roosevelt with my full support.This will at least convince the U.S. authorities that we are not insincere with regard to the Overlord plan, and that we have spared no time and thought it over and over again in terms of preparations.It is my intention to invite to Quebec the leading specialists in London and Washington who have studied this kind of subject.They can brainstorm the best answers to many technical questions. I am now convinced that there are many advantages in attacking this part of Le Havre-Cherbourg, if only these unexpected seaports can be seized from the beginning, and it will be possible for a hundred or two hundred soldiers with a lot of modern equipment and baggage. Wan Dajun, able to land and continue to move forward.This means that at least twelve thousand tons of heavy loads can be unloaded every day. I also have in mind another related issue of maintaining operational air superiority over combat areas.If we could create a sort of floating airfield, we would be able to refuel our fighter jets at a distance sufficient to strike a landing site, increasing our air power on the battlefield at critical moments.During this busy voyage we discussed various designs, one of which was called Habakak.This design was thought up by Mr. Parker, one of Mountbatten's subordinates.His idea was to make a structure out of ice that would be large enough to serve as a runway for airplanes.The structure was much like a ship, displacing a million tons, slowly self-propelled, with its own anti-aircraft, workshop and repair facilities, and a very small cooling factory to maintain its existence.It has been found that by adding a certain amount of wood pulp in various forms to ordinary sea ice, the resulting mixture loses the brittleness of ice and becomes extremely tough.The substance, named Pikerit after its inventor, seems to offer great possibilities to meet our needs not only in northwestern Europe but elsewhere.In addition, it was found that when the ice melts, the fibrous content quickly forms a furry outer layer, which acts as an insulator and greatly delays the melting process.For this idea, a lot of research and development work was carried out in Canada, but due to various reasons, no success has been achieved. The planners and the British Chiefs of Staff made three crucial assumptions, with which I wholeheartedly agree.Later, we shall see that they too were approved by the Americans and accepted by the Russians. 1. Before an attack can be launched, the German fighter force in northwest Europe must be substantially weakened. 2. At the beginning of the operation, it must be made impossible for Germany to have more than twelve mobile divisions in northern France; and during the next two months it must be impossible for Germany to form an army of more than fifteen divisions. 3. The problem of maintaining, for a long period of time, the supply of large numbers of troops on the beaches of the stormy Channel must be resolved.To guarantee this, we must, most importantly, be able to build at least two effective artificial harbors. I also had many discussions with the chiefs of staff of the three armed forces regarding the affairs of the Indian battlefield and the Far East battlefield.We don't have much to talk about in this regard.In late 1942 a division advanced along the Arakan coast of Burma to recapture the port of Achab.Although increased to a full corps under the command of General Owen, the operation was a failure, and our troops were forced to fall back to the Indian frontier. Although there is much to be said for the explanation, I think that the whole question of the British High Command's operations against Japan must be examined.We need new approaches and new characters.I have long felt that it is a very inappropriate arrangement for the commander-in-chief of the Indian battlefield to command the operations in Burma in addition to his other major responsibilities.It seems to me that a separate Supreme Allied Command would be necessary in Southeast Asia to vigorously wage large-scale fighting against Japan.The Chiefs of Staff fully agreed with me and prepared a memorandum along this line for discussion with our American counterparts in Quebec.The question of the commander of this new field is still open, but we believe that it should undoubtedly be the British.Knowing in my mind that Vice-Admiral Mountbatten was well-qualified for such a command of importance, among the many proposed, I resolved to present it to President Roosevelt at the first opportunity.It is an unusual measure to appoint an officer whose actual rank is only a colonel in the Royal Navy to be the supreme commander of a major field, but I have carefully prepared the reasons in advance, so that if the President enthusiastically agrees, I will not accept it. will be surprised. The following is an excerpt from a memorandum on programs and policy that I prepared for the Chiefs of Staff Committee. August 7, 1943 Before we meet with Americans, we must determine: (1) The general plan for Southeast Asia Command and its Supreme Commander; (2) Concerning attacking the enemy, and showing that we have a clear proposal to make a difference on this battlefield.Past failures and ineffective command on this battlefield are being to some extent being properly blamed. I think we should get Brigadier General Wingate to tell his story and send several copies of his report to the chiefs of staff of the United States Armed Forces to convince them that we are serious in this part of the Southeast Asian front.Obviously, the army along the coast of Arayu should wait at leisure to fight the enemy.However, the amphibious campaign against Achab should stop now.This was done not only in the interests of the primacy of the Mediterranean campaign, but because it was itself a defective and unsound military operation.It wants to strike the enemy where the enemy is well prepared.In this way, it is easy to be heavily counterattacked by the enemy.It fails to achieve the main strategic purpose. A man who spends every waking minute occupied with work during a voyage is amazed at how quickly a voyage can end.I had expected a period of rest and some adjustment to my life from the constant tumult of war.But, as we sail closer to our destination, it seems like the vacation has passed before it even started.